tori speak

I’m a musician first, a food-lover second, a dirty mouth with feet, and a girl last time I checked - Tori Amos

[torispeak]

Q: Do men age more easily? A: Men in music and the movie businesses turn 50, get a paunch, look as rugged as the Marlboro man and attract younger women. Women get lines on their faces and become rugged too, the Marlboro woman, which is fine but not an aphrodisiac. I won't talk about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs [MTV video music awards], but I will say women have sexualised themselves and made great art, which they may get flak for, but it's powerful. But if you sexualise yourself and you're not making art, you are just sexualising yourself. Everyone's embarrassed. It's not very good, is it? You're just pooping on yourself. The Observer (UK) Saturday, September 14, 2013

[torispeak]

Worlds don’t need to be disconnected from each other. They can have parameters and edges. Edges are not bad things. And cliffs and all of that. But you want to be able to traverse from worlds, so there need to be portals. And if you can act as a portal as a musician, then it’s incredibly gratifying

The Daily, Sept 26 2011 

[torispeak]

Right after I started writing songs, probably when I was 11, the songs came to me and said, 'Let us go do our own thing.' I decided that their relationships with people are none of my business.

Somebody will come backstage and go, 'You saved me.' And I have to go, 'Stop right there. You saved yourself.' 

I have to remind them that the works [they're] talking about are windows, or a lightbulb going on. Nothing more ... Or I'll hear someone's description of what a song means to them and the only thing to do is go, 'Well,' and realize that people are going to interpret things any way they want.” 

Philadelphia Inquirer - May 3, 1998

[torispeak]

I think there’s a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer. After a while of getting jerked around, you realize what the business is really made up of. Which are a lot of, frankly, judgmental people. They equate greatness with success … And after that kind of treatment, I said, “Right, then. I’m going to sing about things that I’m burning to write about, and I really don’t give a fuck who praises it, because I have to save my own soul, which I sold out to please these people who don’t give a shit about me, and I don’t even know who they are.

AV Club 2011

[torispeak]

I’m just like Faust, baby, just take a seat. When you’re gonna dig in your shadow patterns, you find a part of yourself you could call the Wicked Mother or the Evil Queen. Well just talk to her. Make a deal with her. Cause she’s part of your life.”

Oor - September 18, 1999 

[torisongs]

Amanda of Tori Songs, Natasha of All These Years, and Tiffany of Tori Amos Confessions have teamed up to celebrate our favorite little redhead’s 50th birthday!  We’re raising money for RAINN, giving away some Tori-related merchandise, and gathering up birthday messages to her from around the world. Learn more and hang out with us here: https://www.facebook.com/events/178520725658286/ http://rainnmakers.rainn.org/ToriBirthdaybash http://50yearsoftori.tumblr.com/ http://twitter.com/50yearsoftori

[torispeak]

I’d been playing bars and lounges for about 13 years, so that when I was able to put out this music on Little Earthquakes and play it and people would be responding like they were, sometimes I wouldn’t know what to say when somebody would just be crying there in front of me. But I had to realize it wasn’t about me, it really wasn’t, and it isn’t. 

I began to see that people were having a relationship with the songs, and I was really kind of a scribe for the consciousness of the songs to express themselves. And it took me a while to get it, but once I did, I found it really freeing. Because I thought, “You know, you’re a part of this, people aren’t directing this at you, don’t be confused, you don’t need to feel strange. This is people having a relationship with the song, and they’re choosing to tell you about it. They don’t have to tell you about it, Tori. So feel privileged that they are confiding in you.” 

And that took me a little while to get, but once I got it, I must tell you it was great feeling, like you’re part of a community. When I play live, it’s a conversation that we’re all having with the song, and the audience… their response and relationship with the songs is as valid as my relationship with the songs.

AVClub.com - October 13, 2011

[torispeak]

Well, you have to confront the issue that’s causing you fear. You know that saying, “If it’s too loud, turn it up?” You have to go into that place of… if you’re being intimidated by an idea or thought, you have to hold your ground and look it right in the eye. And that’s tricky sometimes, because whatever you’re confronting might be more slippery than a—well, I don’t know—and that could just be information, crap your friends are telling you about something. You know, you don’t… sometimes. Fear comes because you don’t know what to believe … when you’re facing a fear, I try and step into a place of neutrality, where everything doesn't have to end okay. Everything doesn't end with a hug. PopWreckoning.com - December 2009

[torispeak]

What I’m trying to tell other women is they have their own version of the compartmentalized feminine which may have been repressed in each one of them. For many years I have been an image; that isn't necessarily who I am completely. I have made certain choices and that doesn't mean that those choices are the whole story. I think these women are showing me that I have not explored honest extensions of the self who are now as real as the redhead. SameSame - 2007

[torispeak]

... you start collecting all kinds of things from the age you're old enough to. You collect rocks, you collect ideas. You pick up these rocks, these ideas, and you place them in a bag that you carry with you wherever you go. These rocks represent events and experiences that you take with you. Sometimes though, these rocks become too heavy to carry around. After all, there are only so many rocks that you can carry in your bag before they weigh you down so much that you can’t even move, much less walk. Some rocks you just have to take out of your bag. 

Piece by Piece, 2006

[torispeak]

Q: Do you at least sympathize with the guy who’s only at your show because his girlfriend has dragged him there? A: No. I just think, “I’m gonna get you laid tonight, buddy. You've gotta thank me.” Spin - June 2009

[torispeak]

There has to be a healing process, the ability to laugh at the end of the day. You can crawl inside your pain, it doesn't have to be all throw up. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable, sometimes I defy people, but my strength is that I can crawl inside my heart. I’m becoming aware of why I feel what I feel. That doesn't mean I’m at peace, but I can accept the turbulence. I’m learning to be a free agent, not other people’s victim.

What's On Birmingham (UK), 1991

[torispeak]

Nihilism is not a plane of existence. Nihilism spikes through onto this plane, its chords gripping a human and then infecting. The infection makes its way on neural pathways- the human, unsuspecting. These humans then proceed to infect and debilitate a person who is beginning to make positive changes in their life because the infector cannot bare those who choose to create with life, those who are striving to pull themselves out of denigration- out of victimization. So they attack. They spew accusations or catchy rhetoric to the unaware. Beware. They can begin to put you on the defense and that which is true. The ‘he said ’ or ‘she said ’ of it all is a trap. A trap of smoke and mirrors. Where have I been? The mind ‘s diminishing wisdom submits to discrediting truth or discrediting those I should trust. Why do I want to interrogate those I trust? When I ask myself this I know the infection has begun. Pip - American Doll Posse Sept. 2007 Blog Entry

[torispeak]

For all these years, I felt like all these different people at a dinner party. When you've got the virgin and the whore sitting next to each other at dinner, they’re likely to judge each other harshly. But it’s never about good girl and bad girl, right and wrong, good and evil. You can’t have your body without your shadow. Melody Maker (UK) - November 1991

[torispeak]

The music always comes in my darkest hour, and the music is always so giving. I have this picture of an endless well somewhere, I don’t know where it is — in the star systems out there. And the more that you’re open to it the more that it keeps coming.

The New York Times - April 23, 1998

[torispeak]

I made a decision to stop being unconscious. And how you do that is you give yourself the keys to the unconscious room and you walk in and you go, ‘What’s up?’ and all the little monsters come out with their party hats. Sacramento Bee - May 8, 1992

[torispeak]

I don’t have to try in the least to shock people. My beliefs are sufficiently shocking to most people. Because we live in a culture where passion and sexuality have been replaced by shame. We are miles away from our hearts, our feelings. In Greek mythology the gods were sleeping with humans all the time. But the Christians claim Jesus was fathered without a single drop of sperm. There wasn’t even a penis involved. It’s a religion without penetration. And subsequently the same believers take their swords and chop the non-believers to pieces, stab babies to death and burn witches at the stake. And you think I’m shocking when I say I gave God a blowjob? Give me a fucking break!

Nieuwe Revu, 1998