Quotes By Alanis Morissette

The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.

When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life. So I bit my tongue. I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s.

I didn't want to be one of those women who wake up at 63 years old and realize they've missed the window of opportunity for marriage and children.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

I need to be performing. I need to be acting. I need to be designing a condo and ripping down walls and buying new plates and looking at fashion magazines. There always has to be some movement in the artistic department for me to not get really, really low.

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY will always be his boss.

Trauma happens in relationships, so it can only be healed in relationships. Art can't provide healing. It can be cathartic and therapeutic but a relationship is a three-part journey.

The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it.

I think quite spiritually of myself. I feel like I'm here to support the human evolution.

I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.

What influenced me was Tori Amos, who was unapologetic about expressing anger through music, and Sinead O'Connor. Those two in particular were really moving for me, and very inspiring, before I wrote 'Jagged Little Pill.'

I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.

Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

My message to anyone who's afraid that they can't write music when they're happy is 'Just trust the passion.' The passion can write a lot of things.

Partnership is the way. Dictatorial win-lose is so old-school.

But I love to entertain. My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to - in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet - very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

Getting married and starting a family has been a lifelong goal and one that I have persevered through different paths up to it!

Over the last couple of years, I've really worked toward balancing my life out more, having a little bit more time with friends, family and my boyfriend. There was a period of time when they were way down the list. It was all about music and touring and if everything fell by the wayside, so be it.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

America's a very traumatized society.

I just feel compelled to continue to be transparent. It just really levels the playing field and eradicates the shame that I have, or that one might have, about being human. So I'm going to just keep going.

My greatest environments in which I can grow, or grow up, is in personal romantic relationships with a man.