Ani Difranco Quotations

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.

Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'd rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.

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.

I don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do then survive.

I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.

Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.

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.

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

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

If I'm gonna go down I'm gonna do it with style. You won't hear me surrender, you won't hear me confess cause you've left me with nothing but I have worked with less.

Just let me go, we have to be able to criticize what we love, to 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.

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

I have something to prove, as long as I know there's something that needs improvement, and you know that everytime I move, I make a woman's movement.

There isn't much I have to say, that I wouldn't rather just shut up and do.

Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

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

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

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.

Art is why I get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know I don't think its fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.

Taking me seriously is a big mistake. I certainly wouldn't.

Taken out of context I must seem so strange.

If you like it, let it be, and if you don't please do the same.

Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.

People need something or someone to fasten themselves to in order to reassure themselves that they are real.

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

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

My songs are just little letters to me.

When I look down, I miss all the good stuff when I look up, I just trip over things

Cause to me, it's, there's nothing that's personal and private, it's all universal. There's no experience that I have ever had that's unique. And the fact that there is just certain stuff that we share but don't admit to and don't talk about. You know, what is that about?

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.

we thought we left possession behindbut truth is i was yours and you were mine

we thought we left possession behind but truth is i was yours and you were mine

Here's a toast to all those people living on the pine ridge reservation under the stone cold gaze of mount rushmore

Here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors who daily provide women with a choice, who stare down a threat the size of Oklahoma City just to listen to a young woman's voice.

Squint your eyes and look closer. I'm not between you and your ambitions. 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. 'Cuz some day you are gonna get hungry, and eat all of the words you just said.

Maybe I'll live my whole life just getting by. Maybe I'll be discovered; maybe I'll be colonized. You could try to train me like a pet, you could try to teach me to behave, I'll tell you that I haven't learned it yet, I ain't gonna sit, I ain't gonna

you can doubt anythingif you think about it long enoughcuz what happened always adjusts to fit what happened after that

you can doubt anything if you think about it long enough cuz what happened always adjusts to fit what happened after that

We're all rehearsing for the presidency. I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman-army.

I envy your ignorance, I hear that it's bliss.

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

How come I can pick my ears, but not my nose? Who made up that rule anyway? How can you say that's the way it is, that's just the way it goes, why don't you decide fore yourself what you can do?

I use my dress to wipe up my drink, I care less and less what people think.

What makes you so lavish that you can afford to spend every sober moment feeling angry and bored?

What doesn't bend, breaks.

Self-Preservation is a full-time occupation.

Science chases money, and money chases its tail, and the best minds of my generation cannot make bail.

A good brain ain't diddley, if you don't have the facts.

Now I wonder who is gonna be president: Tweedle Dumb, or Tweedle Dumber-- And who is gonna have the big block buster box office this summer.

Freedom and democracy, That's the word from Washington every day. Put America to sleep with warm milk and clichés, And people are expendable along the way.

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.

Let's show them all how it's done, let's do it all imperfectly.

Maybe we are both good people who've done some bad things.

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.

Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there.

I'm an atheist how unfortunate it is to assign responsibility to the higher up for justice amongst people,

Virtue is relative at best, there's nothing worse than a sunset when your driving due West.

We negotiate with chaos for some sense of satisfaction.

Who says I like right angles? These are not my laws, these are not my rules.

I am a work in progress dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding.

Someday you're going to get hungry and eat most of the words you just said.

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

I'm sounding out the silence, avoiding all the words.

I am 32 flavors and then some.

Birth is the epicenter of women's power

My life may not be something special But it's never been lived before.

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?

I used to be a superhero; no one could touch me, not even myself. You are like a phone booth I somehow stumbled into, and now look at me - I am just like everybody else.

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

Some people wear their smile like a disguise. Those people who smile a lot, watch their eyes. I know 'cause I'm like that a lot. You think everything's ok, and it is . . . 'till it's not.

When I look around I think this, this is good enough; And I laugh at whatever life brings because when I look down, I just miss all the good stuff and when I look up, I just trip over things.

We barely have time to react in this world, let alone rehearse.

When everything else seems unclear, at least I'll know I do it for the joy it brings.

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

TIME is not a thing that's ours to lose.

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.

First decide what you got to do, then go out and do it. All we can do is to see each other through it.

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

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.

I was supposed to be cool about this, yeah, I remember - cool was the plan. Tried to keep it all under wraps, but the wraps kept going slack. I keep turning round, I keep coming back.

Let's grow old and die together. Let's do it now.

And thoughts of no other man but you could possibly get through the picket lines to enter into my mind.

Somedays the line I walk turns out to be straight - Other days the line tends to deviate.

In any marginalized community, whether people identify themselves or not affects us all.

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

I am still praying for revolution.

I am writing graffiti on your body. I am drawing the story of how hard we tried.

I can't wait to get back to New York City where at least when I walk down the streat, no one ever hesitates to tell me exactly what they think of me.

The world is my oyster. The road is my home. And I know that I'm better off Alone.

But as bad as I am, I'm proud of the fact that I'm worse than I seem

It's not important to be defined, it's only important to use your time well.

How come I can pick my ears but not my nose?

I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.

I've never had a very closely connected family. 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.

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

I had a little bit of resistance to the idea of taking energy away from my work, and the baby comes along and, lo and behold, that's exactly what happens.

Playing show after show is like my bread and butter.

I don't hate being compared with female musicians. I don't mind that at all. I have no problem with seeing connections between women's work.

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