Ani DiFranco

“All of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general.”

“Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about, but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society.”

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

“I am not an angry girlBut it seems like I’ve got everyone fooledEvery time I say something they find hard to hearThey chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear”

“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.”

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

“I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.”

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

“The stronger I am in my personal life, the more energy I have to look outward, to address my society.”

“I'm not one of those people who has an act.”

“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.”

“Music has as many roles as people make it.”

“Playing show after show is like my bread and butter.”

“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 hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.”

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

“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.”

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

“Having more exposure is kind of a bittersweet thing for me, honestly, because it's nice to have a little more job security in life now.”

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