Quotes from Tori Amos

You don't leave people who can't defend themselves.

Right now, half the world is depressed and they need to be entertained.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other.

To me happiness, true happiness is when you can really dance with sad.

You know when people smile too much? It's painful. I find it really painful. Happy is not very reliable. I'm trying to live like, um, with a fierce calm.

Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.

I wanted to do something creatively, having been a beached whale for many months and nursing my daughter.

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.

My childhood was extreme.

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.

I'm a conduit for telling people's stories. It's a privilege.

When I was little, my mom tells me, I used to say things like, 'Mom do you hear the string section? Do you hear the string section?' And she would look at me and say, 'No honey, I don't know what you're talking about.'

Though I can't change what happened, I can choose how to react. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up.

I like involved projects.

At 15, I knew someone whose mother cooked macrobiotic, so I persuaded my mother to go macrobiotic with me.

I think you need to have people around you whose standard is high and who don't accept anything less.

Every place you land in life has a reason and a lesson.

I get painted quite a bit as a tragic figure because of some of the stuff that's happened in my life.

Life is fleeting. It is to be enjoyed.

Being in your forties - any woman who isn't there yet, I just have to say to you: Euphoria is coming to you.

My ears are huge. If there's ever a problem with a plane I'm on, they could just put me on the wing and I'll land the sucker.

When one doesn't want the limelight, but is also creative in developing whatever it is they are, then you can have two equal people that aren't competing against each other. I think when you are in the same field, it's difficult to leave it outside and not compete. Then when the doors are closed; that pervades everything.

As the sun sets, we've all had those nights where you question your choices and where your life is going.

In my new life, no room for a lost boy.