Quotes from Brandi Carlile

There are still civil rights issues. There are still people who can't be visited by their spouse in the hospital because they're gay. These are humanitarian issues. At the end of the day, all you want is for people to be happy in the pursuit of life, love and liberty.

I've read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you're singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.

My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury.

Colorado is an oasis, an otherworldly mountain place. I've played so many shows in Colorado that I think I'm the Colorado house band.

I didn't get bullied any more than anybody else. I think I got bullied more for being poor than being gay. But no more than any other kid. And I'm sure that I did my fair share of picking on other kids, too. We're all humans.

I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.

My wife even thinks our next album should be recorded in our house, and we should move all the furniture out to the garage. I'm not sure how many spouses would be supportive of that, much less come up with the idea.

In life, I'm most inspired by entertaining people and driven by the desire to do it by such a powerful force that I think it influences everything I do.

The hardest thing about being on the road is not being with my animals.

It's impossible to just come up with one thing that I could say to the world. That's why I've spent my life in the pursuit of the opportunity to sing to it. Summing it up goes against what fuels me.

When we were doing 'Live at Benaroya,' the song 'I Will' was hard to get through. I've always get a big lump in my throat when I sing that song. And also 'Before It Breaks.' So I'm just a different songwriter now. And the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to deliver those songs casually.

The oppression of women is the single most corrosive and urgent problem of our time.

Every city has a town outside with a lake. I pull out my fishing pole and fish. I've been doing that for a long time.

I have vocal trouble from time to time associated with sleep or wine! Or from sleeping in a bunk the size of a coffin and breathing in bus air conditioning all day.

I tend to feel really protective of songs, and if they aren't sitting well in a record, I'll pull them tight to my chest until I feel it's a better time.

The purpose of it all is love.

It's really important to me to promote worthy causes. But not in a heavy, obligatory, responsibility way. I really admired that as a kid, learning about the 'Elton John AIDS Foundation.' And I was obsessed with The Indigo Girls. And they are the consummate activist group, always reaching out, especially to Native causes and things like that.

Writing is sort of putting a puzzle together halfway. Then, performing it has always been the completion of it. Once that happens, I'm feeling verbally communal with other people. It's out there and I feel so much better about it.

I'm really tough. It's a state of mind.

I hope that somewhere in Small Town, U.S.A., a 15-year-old kid looks to me as a role model the way I looked at the Indigo Girls and Elton John as role models.

I love fishing, any kind of fishing.

When I started out, I was definitely writing about experiences that I hadn't had yet. The songs were just based on my influences, songwriters that had written songs before me and that were more experienced and 20, 30 years older than me.

I grew up in a single-wide, three-bedroom mobile home with my family. And now I see them, like, half a dozen times a year. Figuring out how to come home and talk to them again and feel like myself has probably been the greatest challenge.

My mother's a singer and my mother's father is a singer, and everyone on both sides are all country-western bluegrass musicians.