Quotes By Ani DiFranco

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'

Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.

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

I've been collecting some more high-end guitars. I have an old Martin D28 from the '60s, a beautiful, classic Martin that I know I played on 'Mariachi.'

Being a parent has taught me a lot of things already, you know, though it's only been a year and half, and has made me address parts of myself that I would otherwise live in comfortable denial of, or you know and - you know, for instance, my self-loathing.

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.

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.

I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial.

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.

I'm a little hibernating animal. Anonymity is one of my favorite things. I mean, that's why I moved to New York when I was like 18, because there, there are just so many people that there's no one and you're just lost. You're completely invisible and I find that very liberating.

I've been saying the Occupy Movement has got the ball rolling, and now we need to take the fight to the great indoors!

Why do you think I write these feminist songs, to try and teach myself to respect myself. You know, it's not because I'm a hero.

Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous 'girl power' sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it's a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.

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

I've been trying to learn how to not be so conflicted about things like my own anger. I've always had a place in my music for my anger as a way of compensating for not having a mechanism to express it in my everyday life. So I've been trying to be more true to myself, and that helps me to chill out a little bit. But politically, uh-uh. No.

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

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.

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

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.

These days, my main guitar amps have been Magnatone. They're beautiful. Magnatones have actual tremolo, which I recently learned about guitar amps. Often what guitar amps call vibrato is really just a volume Up and Down. But Magnatone has a true vibrato, which is pitch bending. And so, it's just a lush sound.

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.