Ani DiFranco
I always try and stay one step ahead of people, not looking like I looked like last week, so I can be as anonymous as possible and part of it is just for me. It is fun to just come up with new and bizarre colors for each area of your body and things like that, but there are some parts of it that I just keep wanting to negate myself. I hate waking up in the morning and recognizing the woman in the bathroom mirror.Collection: Morning
One thing that Barack Obama promised, one thing that we all know we must do is evolve our industry and our technology to being green and sustainable. We need to move away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, both of which I think spell doom for human society.Collection: Moving
I never try to imagine the future. I kinda think it's a waste of time. I live in the now.Collection: Thinking
Well, it's really gratifying to me to have a stage and some bright lights and a microphone. They're tools and opportunities, and to be able to just pull somebody up on stage with me and point at them is a great feeling.Collection: Opportunity
My main tactic is to focus on the people I respect. The people I think are great people. Do I have their respect? Do I have their support? If the answer is "yes," then I'm doing ok.Collection: Thinking
I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial, so I'd be hard pressed to feel embarrassed by anything I listen to. Besides, I have a three-year-old, so I don't have time for guilty pleasures anyway!Collection: Hate
The scary truth is, you have to scratch some veneer off to gauge where the moral fiber really is in certain pockets of society. It's raw. It's scary. But it gives us a place to work with.Collection: Moral Fiber
People who are just starting out are always sort of coming to me for advice as the example of "independent girl," and lots of people ask, well, how did you get the booking agent or the national distribution or the tours? And I look at them like, "Good lord! Relax!" I mean, how I did it was to not care about it and to not even think about it for years and years. All I thought about was getting the next little gig in the little bar, and I get this sense that people want me to give them the secret formula or the magic trick to make it all happen.Collection: Girl
I think when a society has such a profoundly dark and awful evil such as slavery in its history, then it leaves scars that are very, very deep. And unless we collectively address them and really put our effort to healing them, they'll perpetuate. The United States of America are still suffering from the echoes of slavery. I think we're still reeling from all the pain that is a result of it, and that's a reality.Collection: Pain
Criticism is hard for me but people find hard to believe because they think I'm very tough, very strident, that I tell everybody where to get off, and how. But I've actually got a really thin skin. I don't know. It's quite pathetic. So, yeah, it's hard for me to take criticism. But I also kind of have this sense of humor on overdrive, so I don't take any of it seriously. So that sort of saves me, the fact that I think it's just all kind of funny.Collection: Believe
I feel like we need to understand feminism more as a tool to mediate, counteract, to ultimately defeat patriarchy and restore balance to our government, our culture and our ways of thinking and structuring the world. I think we've had a very "masculine" sensibility for a long time, and I think we need to go back to the roots of social imbalance. I think we have to try to right that first, and from there and all these more pressing issues will follow.Collection: Thinking
Like a lot of people, I had this naive hope that Barack Obama would fix everything quickly. You know, the culture of celebrity in this country leads us away from democratic ways of thinking and into this hero worship. And so of course, one man cannot swoop in and fix everything on his own. It's much more complicated and difficult than that, and progressives in this country since then have had to come to terms with the fact that we need to do more than actually get out of our house and vote. It's an ongoing process to turn the tide.Collection: Country
Second Wave feminism started with consciousness-raising groups, which sounds "big" but it's really just house parties. Women getting together and saying, "You feel this way?! Me too!" Hanging out is consciousness-raising.Collection: Party
Change the narrative, change the laws.Collection: Law
As any mom knows, having a baby is an extremely creative act and to love and create a baby, it's on par with any other creative act that we could come up with.Collection: Mom
I'm pretty much a workaholic, but when you're doing what you love it's hard to think of a reason to stop.Collection: Thinking
Promiscuity does not scare me as long as she is savvy and self possessed when puberty comes to call. My aim is to simply raise my daughter to be secure in her self worth and capable of happiness all on her own.Collection: Daughter
There are so many things that we have to be very concerned about. But I always come back to feminism.Collection: Feminism
One thing I do find in the "lost" generation or something is a kind of abhorrence of history, you know, like it's boring, dumb, or just not interesting. I think it's terribly interesting if you can get your head around how it relates to where you're standing right here and now.Collection: Thinking
I'm home in New Orleans!Collection: Home
We need a radically truthful way to acknowledge reproductive freedom.Collection: Needs
You've already put more than enough energy into worry. That's all women have been allowed to do, historically.Collection: Worry
I fear that Donald Trump will continue to be followed around by the media in its totality as he continues to rail against Hillary Clinton.Collection: Media
It's the ground that we walk on, it's where we sit, it's the language that we use. It's a difficult undertaking, but I think without healing that and creating more of a balance between the sexes, we will never have balance globally. I feel like I am going deeper and deeper into this space where I came from that I barely understood.Collection: Sex
What I like way better than LGBT in terms of labeling sexuality actually is a scheme that comes to me from my friend Animal Prufrock wherein one is identified not by what they supposedly "are" but rather by what they are into. Which brings us to the terms hemosexual, shemosexual, and mosexual.Collection: Animal
Some people's minds we're not going to change. But if we can't, we need to bring more positive voices into the discussion.Collection: Voice
Music has as many roles as people make it. I traveled to Burma once years ago to witness the people's struggle for democracy, meet some people and learn some stuff. And I had this incredible experience over and over again in the Burmese jungle or refugee camps or health clinics with very oppressed, very devastated people. I show up, and I'm white and I'm American and I'm privileged and I have an experience that these people can't fathom and vice versa. There was this huge chasm when I met people for all good reasons.Collection: Struggle
now the profile of our country looks a little less hard nosed / but that picket line persisted and that clinic's since been closed / they keep pounding their fists on reality hoping it will break / but I don't think there's a one of us leads a life free of mistakesCollection: Country
Now I wonder who is gonna be president: Tweedle Dumb, or Tweedle Dumber-- And who is gonna have the big block buster box office this summer.Collection: Summer
Now let's get talking: reefer madness. Like some arrogant government can't, By any stretch of the imagination, outlaw a plant.Collection: Government
I am a work in progress dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding.Collection: Expression
When I look around I think this, this is good enough; And I laugh at whatever life brings because when I look down, I just miss all the good stuff and when I look up, I just trip over things.Collection: Thinking
My distraction's my defense against this lack of inspiration Against this slow deflation Yeah the further the horizon The more it holds my gaze The foreground's out of focus but you know I kinda hope it's just a phase Just a phase.Collection: Inspiration
Don't tell me what they did to you as though you had no choice. Tell me, isn't that your picture? Isn't that your voice.Collection: Art
Outside sleep's open window, between the drops of rain, history is writing a recipe book for every earthly pain.Collection: Pain
People used to make records, as in the record of an event, the event of people playing music in a room, and now everything's cross-marketing, its about sunglasses and shoes, or guns and drugs that you choose.Collection: Gun
We've got ego's like hairdos.Collection: Ego
So many of us, myself included, need to keep our sense of personal outrage in check. Each human beings position on the planet is one of intense humility.Collection: Humility
You got to look outside- your eyes- you got to think outside- your brain- you got to walk outside- your life- to where the neighborhoods change.Collection: Teacher
I know the biggest crime is just to throw up your hands, Say, This has nothing to do with me, I just want to live as comfortably as I can...Collection: Hands
i found religion in the greeting card aisle now i know hallmark was rightCollection: Women
...words are some of the most powerful and important things I know....Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger--and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.Collection: Powerful
I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.Collection: Moving
Feel free to listen, feel free to stare.Collection: Philosophy
I speak without reservation, from what I know and who I am. I do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voices to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance. The worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned.Collection: Who I Am
You are so lame. You always disappoint me. It's kind of like our running joke but it's really not funny and I just want you to live up to the image of you I create.Collection: Running
I'll walk the plank and I'll jump with a smile, cause if I'm gonna go down I'm gonna do it with style.Collection: Style
Subtract out the impact and the fall is all you get. So here's two beers to remember why and three more to forget.Collection: Fall
We have a complete void of progressive politics in this country right now. The will of the people goes ignored and unrealized. I'm searching for the people that can enter the political system, a strong third party. We need to consolidate.Collection: Country