Melissa Etheridge
I stand before you a totally healthy person.Collection: Health
Love is never wrong.Collection: Love
I think being a parent is knowing how to love. Sometimes love is discipline, sometimes it's humor, sometimes it's listening.Collection: Humor
There are many plant medicines that are available to us that have a lot of stigma around them that I hope, in the future, our medical community can look at, because I would absolutely go to those alternatives first before I went back to Western medicine.Collection: Medical
Christmas comes during a season when the Earth is in its darkest time. It's a holiday for the family and for everyone.Collection: Christmas
I adopted a healthier diet. I take at least a tablespoon of apple-cider vinegar a day. It's an old wives' tale, but it really is one of the best things you can put in your mouth.Collection: Diet
There is no fear when you choose love. The more you choose love, the more love is in your life. It gets easier and easier.Collection: Fear
Our society, where we are right now, our minds are junkyards. We watch TV and sit on the computer all day and barely have an original thought.
I'm for gay marriage, because I'm for gay divorce.
I'm not one for big public displays of affection, anyway. Straight, gay, whatever.
What I do believe in is other worlds and spirits. There is some other power in control - levels of energy that perhaps we don't see.
I can be a rock star with a television show and still have a self-esteem problem. So it's nice to have your dad go, 'Hey Melissa, I'm proud of you - you're doing good.'
I tell people that anything that could ever happen to you on stage has happened to me. My clothes have fallen off. I've fallen off the stage. I've gotten sick - anything.
I've worked since I was 11 years old, playing music and following the dream, and shaking and moving and doing it. And then, you have cancer and it was like 'Ooooohh.' It was like a big eraser. It was the only thing in my life that had ever made me just stop.
I'm very fortunate that I have a wonderful family around me and loved ones.
I'm exploring the maturity, the wisdom that just comes from having gone around the sun 50 times. My experience is, 'Oh, I'm never really going to get it right. I'm never going to get it done. But that's not the point here.' The point is the journey.
I have always loved Broadway.
It was tough being a single mom. It was tough being in a divorce with children. Very, very hard.
Don't let anyone tell you that you have to be a certain way. Be unique. Be what you feel.
There's a point when your tape of life runs off the reel and there's this stillness of your own - I got to know myself.
I kind of thought when I was 30 that you're as good as your going to get. And that's not true.
I've sold my soul for freedom. It's lonely but it's sweet.
I always tell people I'm grateful for my cancer diagnosis because it was the greatest gift because it completely changed my life. I was able to stop and let my whole life and world just crash over me like a wave. And I stood there and went, 'Wow.' And for the first time, I stopped everything. I had to.
When I grew up, there were no songs about gay people.
Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.
I don't have a bucket list because it is my dedication to live every day of my life there. I don't have a bucket list because I'm doing it that day. I don't want to go to bed and say, 'Oh, I wish I had done this.'
I'm so close to Heaven, this Hell cannot be mine.
The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.
There will always be someone else with a different view than you. I appreciate them and would never say that they are wrong. I hope that they would give me that courtesy also.
I feel my heart break to see a nation ripped apart by it's own greatest strength - it's diversity.
Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana.
I definitely feel we're moving forward. There's a lot more understanding... there's less fear and we're working on there being less hatred.
I've been a rock star since you were very young. But I've never encountered anything as powerful as cancer.
To be completely stripped bare of any image power or my hair. To step onstage and get the response that I got blew any problems I had about self-image out the door.
My friends have always told me that rock stardom was wasted on me.
Our great Constitution challenges us to grow constantly.
I am a songwriter. I do get to put my personal experiences in song.
I have found that I'm just political just by being who I am.
There's been so many different types of musicals, and it's a funny genre because there's a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.
I think it has done us more harm believing in the huge differences between left and right, Democrat and Republican.
I write songs for people who drive in cars. I really do.
My kids and I love to listen to Bill Cosby.
We all want to judge; it's an intrinsic part of our society and human nature. I'm not surprised that talent shows are hits, but I'm glad some of them aren't so brutal.
I believed in Obama for social issues. I believe he brought our nation together and healed our racial divide. Martin Luther King's dream came true when he was elected. That's huge.
In country music, there are certain female artists, like Gretchen Wilson, where you're going to find lesbians because they're responding to that more aggressive side.
Your own personal health is your own personal choice, all the way down the line.
My belief is that cancer comes from inside you and so much of it has to do with the environment of your body. It's the stress that will turn that gene on or not.
Chemotherapy tests your sanity.
Laughing is a medicine. It releases this amazing stuff.
Realizing I was gay was a long sort of waking up.