“I don’t consider myself to be part of any religion now, although I was brought up a Catholic, and that probably reflects in my music.”
“I think there’s been an element of my looking outside of myself a little more, and my albums are about expressing where I’m at in any period of time.”
“These days I feel fundamentally peaceful.”
“I was always sitting around the kitchen table till 3 or 4 in the morning with my family, just having intellectual discussions, you know so. You know important things like what to wear to school the next day haha, no we talked about everything you know everything, we’d talk about emotions, the world, we’d talk about our family and our perception of all the craziness around us.”
“There is no better feeling than when you write something you know is a piece of you and that, at some point, is going to communicate with someone else.”
“When I was living in Toronto and was prepared, emotionally, to write from a more honest place and actually back that up, I heard ‘Little Earthquakes’ and was really heartened by hearing that..”
“We were actually in a very decitant setting, I think Taylor, Nick and I were in a limo, in Chicago going to a radio interview and it was playing on the radio and I just laughed at my surroundings, I was like ‘I’m in a limo now, this is soo out of hand now’ ” – when asked when she first heard her song on radio and how she felt.
“I think the internet is the anti-christ, I am apprehensive to begin with, the whole technological evolution, but I just can’t deal with that.”
“I have an insational appetite for knowledge and answers, and I like communicating it once I discovered, or I like to communicate my lack of discovery of it I guess, sometimes, I don’t know, I love it, it’s what I feel I was meant to do on this earth”
“Most of the songs are, in a roundabout way, actually addressed to myself, there’s a certain aspect of the songs that’s very confessional, very unadulterated…It was a very unfettered, spiritual experience.”
“I just spilled water all over me,”
“You can dress her up..(laughing) No, you can’t even dress her up.”
“Having struggled with my view of my body for so long resulted in my having a kind of toxic relationship with exercise.. “When I was younger I just loved running and biking and swimming and playing, but as I went through the teen years and my relationship with my body became so confusing, my relationship with sports became confusing too. It was so liberating to do a triathlon and do it for the reasons I used to play sports when I was 12.”
“My friends, who know me very well, are just soo happy that I am finally getting all of this out of my system.”
“I wish people could achieve what they think would give them happiness in order for them to realize that that’s not the way that happiness can be found,”
“I was very intrigued by what celebrity status, fame, adulation could bring me, It was touted as something that would raise your self-esteem and provide you with eternal happiness. Food would taste better, people would be more exciting, relationships would be great.”
“I had this insatiable desire to create and express and sing and dance and act and paint and draw and write poems. I just couldn’t help it, it was dying to come out.”
“I always believed in black and white; something was either great or horrible, including myself. And now it’s just gray.”
“I feel like I’ve gone from repression to explosion to contemplation,”
“I know I can’t control the external world, which is the reception to which I create. There’s an internal world, which is my personal development, creative development, and spiritual development. That’s the only thing I can control. I can control how much knowledge I feed myself, but I can’t control what happens around me with peoples perceptions of it.”
“My whole philosophy on life is that I’m not about external appearance, what I have to say is far more important than how long my eyelashes are.”
“People have to be validated when they go through an angry state. When you’re hurt, your immediate emotion is to protect yourself and get really angry. But in my estimation, anger is a cowardly expression or extension of pain or sadness”.
” A lot of people think it has to be greater than the truth in order for it to be charismatic and sought-after, the truth is if you are what you are and your path is such you will connect with a lot of people you will and if you don’t you we’re not suppose to ”
” You don’t really know how amazing things are unless you have that the contrast of things not having been amazing for a certain amount of time. I happen to like this theory”
“Any time you deprive yourself of food or anything for the sake of what society wants you to be, your system, or the universe, is going to make sure you get even more of it than you need ”
” The subconscious is a great source for nasty thoughts and lyrics: especially for women because we like to explore our inner demons more than men do. MEN- hate to go through painful self-analysis, but woman are almost obsessed with it.”
” I think that the more you open up, the least it has power over you It’s the truth, and people may not agree with it, or may not want to hear it, But it’s a really peaceful place for me to be ”
“I was totally into psychology. If I wasn’t a musician, I’d be a psychologist”
“I don’t get intimidated by people because…. it’s hard for me to put into words. I respect people. I’ll meet someone and feel respectful and compatible with them, or I won’t. It’s not ever a matter of me thinking I’m inferior to them”
“One minute I’m the best album of the year, the next I’m the worst thing that has ever been created on the earth. So, if I want to go on that roller-coaster ride, then I’m an idiot”
“Part of me just wants to say, Listen to this old record of mine, watch a couple of the videos, then maybe you’ll understand.”
“It’s heartening to see that a lot of people are interested in listening to music that just isn’t about heartbreak, that just isn’t about a love relationship gone right or gone wrong, it’s heartening to know that more people are open to being introspective and to hearing music that is going to require more of them, then just to listen.”
“I started writting songs when I was really little because there were things I could say through songs that I couldn’t verbalize any other way. Writting was something I had to do.”
“I just wanna say that most people’s growth is done in private, an artist’s growth is done in public. And I thank Canada, the country, for accepting that in me.”
“The more I know the less tortured I am.”
“Oh, man, I wish I had me to listen to when I was 14.”
“When it came time to think about an image, all I said is that I didn’t want to be fake. And it’s really great because we wound up with me.”
“I don’t think I’m the kind of artist who comes across as ‘I’m a star, you can idolize me.’ I come across as ‘I’m human, you can relate to me.’ I’m saying what alot of people would want to say but would be far too embarrassed to say it. I had been embarrassed to say it. I wrote from a very dysfunctional part of my subconscious that I rarely indulge.”
“A long time ago I decided to take the positive things that my experiences had to offer, and not bother with the rest. I’ve always beleived you can make whatever you choose out of what life throws at you.”
“I’ve had all sorts of love, I’ve had evacuation love, dependency love and I used to be a control freak.”
“I was just putting up with so much. I walk this fine line constantly of .. having respect and being diplomatic with people and then just standing up for myself, like where do you draw the line?”
“Sometimes on stage I’m like a mirror. My music becomes less about me and more about what the audience sees in me that reminds them of themselves. I sense that some are there to release their own tension and frustrations, and that’s gratifying.”
“I was auditioning not only their musicianship, but also if they understood what I was singing in my songs. I mean, I never came out and posed the question ‘Do you understand where I’m coming from?’ But, I did get a sense from them whether they did. It’s a very precious thing to me, the creation of art, and the process I go through to create is something I hold really dear.”
“I know there are a million more songs. And a million more revelations and thoughts and confusions that I haven’t even begun to write about.”
“I’ve always been the kind of person that would rather write a book than read it, and write a song, rather than listen to one, and have a conversation rather than watch one on T.V.”
“I started making music because I could.”
“I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.”
“Right now, to be quite honest, I’m not scared of anything.”
“I lost my virginity at 19, but I was very sexually active since 14, doing everything but. Isn’t that odd?”
“Yeah, I am a hippy. I fluctuate between being very 1996 and very, um, 1970.”
“I spent a couple of months writing songs that were very personal. Then they were played on this thing called the radio. That’s it!”
“When I was getting my immigration done, under American laws I was considered an ‘alien with a special talent’. Er thanks.”
“I am aware that there are people out there, but I don’t read the letters. Yeah, I’m afraid of them.”
“By no means is this record just a sexual, angry record.”
“I’ve been writing songs since I was nine years old and just really enamerate with music, just so grateful for the fact that I can sing, and I used to write songs to entertain people, to take them away from their daily lives and as I got older, I felt it becoming more important to me to communicate to people and to able to that through music is the ultimate thing in the world, Because music to me is magic and communicating to me is probably the most important thing in my life, so to able to do that at the same time and then be on stage and have a physical release at the same time and connect with people, that is more gratifying then anything I can ever think of.”
“My twenties have been the best years of my life.”
“The main advice I’d give to young musicians is don’t be afraid to phuck up.”
“I’ve been surrounded by adults as far back as I can remember.”
“I have mixed emotions about getting awards. I have difficulty with the concept of being judged. I don’t feel I’m better than any other female artist. I’m just different. Everything we’re all doing is valid.”
“Check one, two your mother twice, check one, two, check one, two testing testing..”
“I don’t think I’m the best, I just think I do it and that a lot of people are enjoying it for what it is and that’s how I see myself. I see myself as someone that has been giving the opportunity to communicate my music to a lot of people, and that’s it!”
“A lot of what I wrote about were difficult times from which I walked away a better person.”
“We’re going to play a song and at the end, we’re going to jam a little bit. I’ll pick up on the juju in the room and do … whatever.”
“When I am on stage, it’s very spiritual. I feel very close to God when I’m up there.””Female artists come up to me and say, Yeeeah, we’re takin’ over! and I shake my head and say, No we’re not. We’re joining.”
“I think everyone’s hungry for the truth”
“Confusion to me sometimes is the worst emotion to go through than anger or sadness, I don’t know why, frustration and confusion are the two worst emotions for me and “Forgiven” allowed me to articulate it, to figure out why I was so confused when I was younger, what I believed in, what I thought God was or wasn’t, what I thought was right or wrong, what I was made to feel guilty for that I could have been reveling in, certain things that were natural for you to go through, as a nine year old, you know where things that were made to be seem bad or wrong and I don’t agree with it, I know I was going through with what was natural, so to write about and to sort of absolve myself of that was very freeing and it also was written at the same time where I was questioning my own spirituality and questioning what that word even meant.”