Quotes from Alanis Morissette

Part of being famous is offering up this blank screen upon which people can project everything, and it's a sacred act, putting yourself out there, in a way that lots of celebrities aren't steeled for; they're not prepared for the degree to which people define them.

Courage and willingness to just go for it, whether it is a conversation or a spontaneous trip or trying new things that are scary - it is a really attractive quality.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

I still indulge in a glass of wine or chocolate - treats are mandatory. Without deviating from the day-to-day healthy diet once in a while, it wouldn't be sustainable for me, and that's what I wanted: an approach to eating to last my entire life.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

All I can promise myself and everyone else is that this record is a snapshot of thisperiod in my life. It will be that by default.

I want to walk through life.

They're different kinds of challenges depending upon what phase of life I'm in.

In my life, anyway, anytime that I judge something to be rigidly right or wrong, it comes from fear.

I think a beautiful quality that's a biological, hormonal imperative for women, whether they have children or not, is that we're built to be empathic. For me, it was finally being maternal in an appropriate way instead of trying to mommy ex-boyfriends.

I wish people could achieve what they think would bring them happiness in order for them to realize that that's not really what happiness is.

Women are so powerful they're scary, and the incentive to squash this has been going on for so long that some of us actually believe we're subordinate.

I'm a liability to them - I'm a woman, I'm empowered, I'm an artist. I've had executives who can't come to my shows they're so scared of me. I've been a thorn in many people's sides just by existing.

It's a joke to think that anyone is one thing. We're all such complex creatures. But if I'm going to be a poster child for anything, anger's a gorgeous emotion. It gets a bad rap, but it can make great changes happen.

The spirituality that I experience sometimes touches on religion, in that I resonate with the thread of continuity that permeates through all religions. But in terms of it being a concretized, organized part of my life, it's not.

To me the biggest irony of this lifetime that I'm living is that for someone who thrives in the public eye in the creative ways that I do, I actually don't enjoy being in the public eye.

In 1995, I was thrust into the role of reluctant, flag-waving feminist and emotionally-focused artist/advocate.

For four to six months at a time, I would barely eat. I lived on a diet of Melba toast, carrots, and black coffee.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

I'll be writing records until I'm dead, whether people like it or not! I can't not write; if I don't, then I get really depressed. I'll keep going, I promise!

I did commit to myself that I would not jump back into being the workaholic that I can be before I gave myself an honest opportunity to create the marriage of my dreams and to create the beginning of the family of my dreams, and that took a hot second.

In the past, I had workaholic issues.

Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye, people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously.

I'll be writing songs till I die. There's just no question.