Quotes from Ani DiFranco

I'd rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.

I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort, where we overlap.

When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong, they taught me different was wrong.

You broke me bodily. The heart ain't the half of it, And I'll never learn to laugh at it In my good natured way. In fact, I'm laughing less in general, But I learned a lot at my own funeral. And I knew you'd be the death of me, So I guess that's the price I pay.

Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Art is why I get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know I don't think its fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.

Art is the reason I get up in the morning, but the definition ends there. It doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.

Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.

Why do you think I write these feminist songs, to try and teach myself to respect myself. You know, it's not because I'm a hero.

I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.

My songs are just little letters to me.

Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.

Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there's nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.

Birth is the epicenter of women's power.

God forbid you be an ugly girl, 'course too pretty is also your doom, 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.

Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.

A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous 'girl power' sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it's a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.

I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.

I basically get stereotyped a lot in terms of being a girl and writing 'chick' music for teenage girls or something. I think, if anything, the press kind of, because of my gender and my age, tends to kind of relegate my work to this sort of special-interest group. It's part of the cultural dynamic, I guess.

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'

Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.