Quotes from Tori Amos

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.

I gave up trying to please others and started playing for myself, and because I love music, things naturally happened then. Funny how that works.

I like cosy, intimate houses.

Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.

If you have an issue with homosexuality, then it comes to your own fear and your own darkness.

There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.

I can see how the young girls really get hurt when their moms are critical, or vice versa when they're overly critical of their moms. It can be so painful.

Not everybody wants to have the same career. I think what's difficult is when you have two people that do something very, very similar and they both, say, want the limelight. That's very tricky.

Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you want to be.

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.

Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.

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.

I love the classic crooners, but I got that from my mother - she worked in a record store.

A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.

I would love to compose something for dance before I kick the bucket, and I'm not closed-minded about the dance, or the dance company. I would really just love to collaborate on that.

I was very close to my mother as the youngest of three. She was my playmate.

Being stylish is about enjoying your life and expressing yourself and your inner light.

I produce the records. I don't hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will - for commercial purposes.

Robert Plant asked me to marry him, but I said 'no.' I mean, you just don't want to marry someone you've wanted to do it with since you were thirteen, because, well, if he farts, I would, like, die!

My husband doesn't know what my songs are about - even when they're about him. He's very British in that way. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't want to be told.

Carbon made only wants to be unmade.

People listen to music the way they want to listen to music.

I've been known to throw watermelons, backstage, at people who are giving me news I don't want to hear. But I never aim for the head.

I don't know what a shrink would call me. I don't want to know.