Ani DiFranco Quotes & Sayings

Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked 'other.' — Ani DiFranco

I want somebody who sees the pointlessness and still keeps their purpose in mind;
I want somebody who has a tortured soul ... some of the time — Ani DiFranco

And this vague little smile is my all purpose expression the meaning of which I will leave to your discretion. — Ani DiFranco

Too much is how I love you, but too well is how I know you. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

Love sets fire to your schedule, And then calls an end to time. — Ani DiFranco

I am not an angry girl, but it seems I've got everyone fooled. Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger and not to their own fear. Imagine you're a girl just trying to finally come clean, knowing full well they prefer you dirty and smiling. — Ani DiFranco

I did not design this game; I did not name the stakes. I just happen to like apples; and I am not afraid of snakes. — Ani DiFranco

God help you if you are a phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying past — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

While out in TV Nation, under darkening skies, the resistance is just waiting to be organized. — Ani DiFranco

If you're not angry, then you're just stupid, you don't care. How else can you react when something's so unfair? — Ani DiFranco

I just hope it was okay, I know it wasn't perfect, I hope in the end we can laugh and say it was all worth it. — Ani DiFranco

Smile pretty, and watch your back — Ani DiFranco

I love my country, by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right. Where so many cunning sons and daughters, our foremothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter, came through hell and high water so that we could stand here, and behold breathlessly the sight; how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light. Why can't all decent men and women call themselves feminists, out of respect for those that fought for this? — Ani DiFranco

Fate is not just whose cooking smells good, but which way the wind blows — Ani DiFranco

I'm pretty much a workaholic, but when you're doing what you love it's hard to think of a reason to stop. — Ani DiFranco

My parents split up when I was young, and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way. — Ani DiFranco

In order to keep anything cultural, logical, or ideological, you have to reinvent the reality of it. — Ani DiFranco

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

I've been a long time coming, and I'll be a long time gone. You've got your whole life to do something, and that's not very long. — Ani DiFranco

I can jump ship and swim
that the ocean will hold me,
that there's got to be more
than this boat I'm in. — Ani DiFranco

Playing show after show is like my bread and butter. — Ani DiFranco

When I look down, I miss all the good stuff
And when I look up, I just trip over things ... — Ani DiFranco

Stepped out into the cold, collar high, under the slate gray sky. The air was smoking and the streets were dry, and I wasn't joking when I said goodbye. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

Love is a piano dropped from a four story window and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
-Two Little Girls (Little Plastic Castle) — Ani DiFranco

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.' — Ani DiFranco

For every hand extended another lies in wait. Keep your eye on that one girl ... anticipate. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

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

My feminism has evolved way beyond self-empowerment and I see feminism as a path to peace on earth. The fundamental imbalance that is behind all of the other social diseases is patriarchy. I do believe. As men and women, together, I really long to feel my society evolve its understanding since we're one of the leaders in the f-word. I want us to grow our idea of feminism collectively and get both men and women involved in undoing patriarchy. It's huge. It's a huge job. — Ani DiFranco

Feel free to listen, feel free to stare. — Ani DiFranco

And she tried the high heels but she couldn't bring herself to prance. — Ani DiFranco

I am 32 flavors and then some. — Ani DiFranco

Then I show up steady ready and proud and I find I've forgotten how to talk out loud. Isn't it just like you to bring me to my knees? — Ani DiFranco

Life is a sleazy stranger, who looks vaguely familiar; flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar. — Ani DiFranco

We negotiate with chaos for some sense of satisfaction. — Ani DiFranco

And if there's anything I do it's change and grow. I'm just a living being. Every year of my life I seem to learn that everything I know is wrong. — Ani DiFranco

Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot. — Ani DiFranco

I love to exercise my creativity in many ways but as each year of specialization goes by I feel further and further from my other creative selves. I used to be able to see myself doing many things and sometimes I still long for a job that involves less pressure and grappling with people but, as you say, I am one of the lucky ones so I try to just focus on feeling lucky and carry on! — Ani DiFranco

The world owes us nothing; we owe each other the world. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

You rhapsodize about beauty,
and my eyes glaze.
Everything that I love is ugly.
I mean really, you would be amazed.
Just do me a favor,
it's the least that you can do,
just don't treat me like I am
something that happened to you. — Ani DiFranco

My country tis of thee, to take swings at each other on talk show TV. — Ani DiFranco

The windows of my soul are made of one-way glass, don't bother looking into my eyes if there's something you want to know, just ask — Ani DiFranco

Music has as many roles as people make it. — Ani DiFranco

My thighs have been involved in many accidents
and now i can't get insured
and i don't need to be lured by you — Ani DiFranco

All of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

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

I am a work in progress Dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding Offering me intricate patterns of questions Rhythms that never come clean And strengths that you still haven't seen — Ani DiFranco

Birth is the epicenter of women's power — Ani DiFranco

There's a certain window of time in the middle of the night out in Middle America where there's no bar open and nothing on TV. If you don't want to do too many drugs, you have to start bodily mutilation. — Ani DiFranco

We are wise women, we are giggling girls. We both carry a smile to show when we're pleased, we both carry a switchblade in our sleeves. — Ani DiFranco

[Amy Ray and I] both have this part of our brain that makes us think that everybody should and will be nice and friendly and forthcoming. And then we're completely disillusioned. We have all these grand plans. One of them is the Rolling Thunder Pussy Revue. There's all these women's festivals going on this summer, and we don't think they're as adventurous as they could be. Lilith Fair-right away, by the name, you know they aren't pushing the envelope hard enough. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

It makes me really sad that women have been ejected from the seat of their power in this society in terms of what happens around childbirth. In other parts of the world, there are places where women can't drive a car, but they're still in charge of childbirth ... The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women do. I find it metaphorically resonant that a pregnant woman looks like she's just sitting on a couch, but she's actually exhausting herself constructing a human being. The laborious process of growing a human is analogous to how 'women's work' is seen. — Ani DiFranco

Lying in bed, you know, you don't seem so tall. — Ani DiFranco

I've been waiting for sleep to offer up the day with both hands. — Ani DiFranco

I know my mind is made of matter but I need to know exactly what is the matter at it's core? Because my heart is just a muscle and simply put, it's sore. — Ani DiFranco

I could step off the end of this pier but i got
shit to do and an appointment on tuesday
to shed uninvited blood and tissue
i'll miss you, i say
to the river to the water
to the son or daughter
i thought better of
i could fall in love with jersey
at sunset
but i leave the view to the rats
and tiptoe back — Ani DiFranco

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

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 — Ani DiFranco

Actually I don't know if honesty is a strength or some kind of weakness. — Ani DiFranco

Having more exposure is kind of a bittersweet thing for me, honestly, because it's nice to have a little more job security in life now. — Ani DiFranco

There's a paradox in every paradigm. — Ani DiFranco

I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman army, But I can envision the mediocrity of my finest hour. — Ani DiFranco

I don't like my language watered down, I don't like my edges rounded off. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

If you don't live what you sing about, your mirror is gonna fade. — Ani DiFranco

My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it's very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do. — Ani DiFranco

I love all those great 'f' words - feminism, folk music.. — Ani DiFranco

Someone's got to be interested in how I feel, just because I'm here and I'm real. — Ani DiFranco

I think I'm a very solitary person. To actually not be anonymous is a bit claustrophobic for me. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

We have to be able to criticise what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if your not trying to make something better, than as far as I can tell, you are just in the way. — Ani DiFranco

The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women can do ... birthing naturally, as most women do around the globe, is a superhuman act. You leave behind the comforts of being human and plunge back into being an animal ... — Ani DiFranco

What bugs me is that you believe what you're saying. What bothers me is that you don't know how you feel. What scares me is that while you're telling me stories, you actually believe that they are real. — Ani DiFranco

You've decided to love me for eternity, I'm still deciding who I want to be today. — Ani DiFranco

I don't need anyone to hold me, I can hold my own. — Ani DiFranco

They can call me crazy if I fail, all the chance that I need, is one-in-a-million and they can call me brilliant if I succeed. — Ani DiFranco

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. — Ani DiFranco

Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. You know, it doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define, but there you are, right there, in the meantime. — Ani DiFranco

They see me as a symbol, and not a human being. That way they can kill me, say it's not murder it's a metaphor. — Ani DiFranco

To split yourself in two is just the most radical thing you can do — Ani DiFranco

Everyone is a fuckin' Napoleon. — Ani DiFranco

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

Take away our play stations and we are a third world nation. — 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. — Ani DiFranco

I don't always feel lucky, but I'm smart enough to try. — Ani DiFranco

When all you can think of is your own personal problems, you have nothing to give to your society. If you're trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from, you can't go march on Washington. — Ani DiFranco

I am not a pretty girl. I don't want to be a pretty girl. No, I want to be more than a pretty girl. — Ani DiFranco

You're trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling, and falling is like this. — Ani DiFranco

I mean, I think it's hard enough to find somebody you can stand for more than ten minutes, so, like, you shouldn't narrow your options. — Ani DiFranco

I walk like I'm on a mission 'cause that's the way I groove. I got more and more to do and less and less to prove. — Ani DiFranco

Up up up up up up
points the spire of the steeple
but god's work isn't done by god
it's done by people
— Ani DiFranco

I'm searching, as we all are, for ways to feel good about myself. Certainly, looking in the mirror doesn't do it! — Ani DiFranco

[The 'corporate takeover of people's lives'] also accounts for a lot of homogenization of culture. There are fast food restaurants everywhere. Every place tastes the same. — Ani DiFranco

Spring is super in the supermarkets
and the strawberries prance and glow
never mind that they're all kinda tart and tasteless
as strawberries go
meanwhile wild things are not for sale
anymore than they are for show
so i'll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty
it takes more than eyes to know — Ani DiFranco