Ani DiFranco > Quotes

“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

“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

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

“Don't treat me like I am something that happened to you.”
― Ani DiFranco

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

“Taken out of context, I must seem so strange”
― Ani DiFranco, Ani Difranco: Verses

“and god help you if you are an ugly girl course too pretty is also your doom cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room and god help you if you are a pheonix and you dare to rise up from the ash a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying back”
― Ani DiFranco

“When I look down, I miss all the good stuff
And when I look up, I just trip over things...”
― Ani DiFranco, Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castle

“I don't take good pictures 'cause I have the kind of beauty that moves.”
― 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, Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castle

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

“The world owes us nothing; we owe each other the world. ”
― Ani DiFranco

“We get a little further from perfection,
each year on the road,
I guess that's what they call character,
I guess that's just the way it goes,
better to be dusty than polished,
like some store window mannequin,
why don't you touch me where i'm rusty,
let me stain your hands”
― 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

“Squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I'm beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you're starving
and eating all of the words you said.”
― Ani DiFranco

“I don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do than survive.”
― Ani DiFranco

“If you don't ask the right question, every answer seems wrong -”
― Ani DiFranco

“i fight with love and i laugh with rage....you gotta live light enough to see the humor, and long enough to see some change...”
― 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

“we can't afford to do anyone harm
because we owe them our lives
each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs
our enemies are the very air in disguise

you can talk a great philosophy
but if you can't be kind to people
every day
it doesn't mean that much to me
it's the little things you do
the little things you say
it's the love you give along the way”
― 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

“Maybe you can keep me from never being happy, but you're not going to stop me from HAVING FUN!”
― Ani DiFranco

“When you sit right down in the middle of yourself you're gonna wanna have a comfortable chair.”
― 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

“and half of learning to play is learning what not to play
and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say
and she's trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves
and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove

she crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home
and it's enough just to look around and to know that she's not alone

up 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

“when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable takeable body
an ever-increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
I don't need anyone to hold me
I can hold my own
I got highways for stretchmarks
see where I've grown
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then I could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like I.Q.
for every lie I unlearn
I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.”
― Ani DiFranco

“We have to be able to criticize
what we love,
say what we have to say.
Cause if you're not trying to make something better then
as far as I can tell
you are just in the way.”
― Ani DiFranco

“ i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
”
― Ani DiFranco

“Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.”
― Ani DiFranco

“If more people were screamin', I could relax.”
― Ani DiFranco

“We are made to bleed and scab and heal and bleed again and turn every scar into a joke. We are made to fight and fuck and talk and fight again and sit around and laugh until we choke.”
― 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

“I would like to perfect the art of being studiously aloof”
― Ani DiFranco, Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castle

“fate is not just whose cooking smells good, but which way the wind blows”
― Ani DiFranco

“I opened the fire door
to four lips
none of which were mine
kissing
tightened my belt around my hips
where your hands were missing
and stepped out into the cold
collar high
under the slate grey sky
the air was smoking and the streets were dry
and I wasn't joking when I said
Good Bye
magazine quality men talking on the corner
French, no less much less of them then us
so why do I feel like something's been rearranged?
you know, taken out of context I must seem so strange
killed a cockroach so big
it left a puddle of pus on the wall
when you and I are lying in bed
you don't seem so tall
I'm singing now because my tear ducts are too tired
and my brain is disconnected but my heart is wired
I make such a good statistic
someone should study me now
somebody's got to be interested in how I feel
just 'cause I'm here
and I'm real
oh, how I miss
substituting the conclusion to confrontation with a kiss
and oh, how I miss
walking up to the edge and jumping in
like I could feel the future on your skin
I opened the fire door
to four lips
none of which were mine
kissing
I opened the fire door”
― Ani DiFranco

“Everyone is a fuckin' Napoleon.”
― Ani DiFranco

“The bathroom mirror has not budged, the woman who lives there can tell the truth from the stuff they say and looks me in the eye- says do you prefer the easy way? No? Well ok then, dont cry.”
― 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

“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

“...I try to laugh at whatever life brings...”
― 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

“There's a paradox in every paradigm.”
― Ani DiFranco

“It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.”
― Ani DiFranco

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

“ive played the powerless in to many dark scenes i was blessed with a birth and a death and i guess i just want some say i between”
― Ani DiFranco

“and I try
to draw the line
but it ends up running down the middle of me
most of the time.”
― Ani DiFranco, Ani Difranco: Verses

“a lesson must be lived
in order to be learned
and the clarity to see and stop this now
that is what i've earned”
― 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 make such a good statistic, somebody should study me now; somebody's gotta be interested in how I feel, just cause I'm here, and I'm real.”
― Ani DiFranco

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