Tori Amos
Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.Collection: Moving
I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. We're both Leos, we understand each other.Collection: Relationship
In our minds, love and lust are really separated. It's hard to find someone that can be kind and you can trust enough to leave your kids with, and isn't afraid to throw her man up against the wall and lick him from head to toe.Collection: Trust
Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they're little.Collection: Parenting
I think everyone understands grief, the journey it takes us on, whether it's the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a disappointment. Some people don't deal with it, the power of it. Some do. Some feel the weight of it and it informs their choices. I've had to open up to grief in different contexts.Collection: Relationship
I have so many different personalities in me and I still feel lonely.Collection: Alone
I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom's family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car - it was the late sixties - and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.Collection: Christmas
The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me, troubles me as a minister's daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.Collection: Religion
Tori's my legal name. My niece and nephews, they all call me Aunt Ellen, because I went by my middle name years ago, before I turned 18.Collection: Legal
My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.Collection: Morning
Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you want to be.
Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don't fit into boxes.
I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it.
Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.
I don't mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else's object.
Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about.
Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.
Cornwall is one of the most beautiful places, with great people - there's not a great downside to it.
Even if everything else is downplayed, I'll wear good shoes.
I am the worst influence. If you can't handle your vices, then I am the Devil.
There is an energy that you carry when you're nurturing another life where you're protecting first - and once you know that cub is out of the way of the hunter's gun, you can be a little more daring.
A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.
There's a side to this industry that nurtures divas who can't write. It's a big business.
If I was writing songs just for me I'd only play them in my living room, alone.
Guys would sleep with a bicycle if it had the right color lip gloss on. They have no shame. They're like bull elks in a field.
I'm not like a poker player. I'm not into bluff. My way is to look someone in the eye and tell them the way I'm intending to go. My cards are always on the table.
Being in your forties - any woman who isn't there yet, I just have to say to you: Euphoria is coming to you.
I have never smoked and have always drunk a lot of water, but cleanse, tone and moisturise every day? No way!
Music is always a reflection of what's going on in the hearts and minds of the culture.
I usually get myself into situations that cause sparks. I mean I'm a girl that likes the storms. I love feeling alive, I love walking out in the cold in my bare feet and feeling the ice on my toes.
I'm a musician first, a food-lover second, a dirty mouth with feet, and a girl last time I checked.
For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they're dykes, and they're always good fun.
My father was a preacher in Maryland and we had crab feasts - with corn on the cob, but no beer, being Methodist - outside on the church lawn.
I know I'm an acquired taste - I'm anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.
There were times that I needed to go to battle, but how I went to battle wasn't always the best way in.
Being stylish is about enjoying your life and expressing yourself and your inner light.
There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.
What girls do to each other is beyond description. No chinese torture comes close.
You know that saying, bad things don't happen to good people? That's a lie.
The violence betwen women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.
Many people lock a part of themselves away. It's a bit sacred.
Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.
A lot of the carols were not as you hear them now.
So the first job that I got - my father got it for me - he had his clerical collar on, was a gay bar in D.C., it was Mr. Henry's of Georgetown.
I have a rule that I don't read my press, but then somebody in the crew will be reading it and of course it's right there, so what do you think I do?
An interview will seem very sane to me, and I'll find out that the journalist was laughing out of the side of his mouth half of the time.
I get painted quite a bit as a tragic figure because of some of the stuff that's happened in my life.
Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.
I've had to keep exploring different ways of presenting the music so I don't repeat myself.
If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn't you like to think that's not all there is? That you haven't hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them?