Michelle Shocked

“I accepted a change in my life. I didn't choose that change and those are the best changes to make.”

“People might say I'm difficult, but did you ever hear anyone describe a label as 'difficult'? By nature, artists should challenge. When they call you difficult, it is a reflection of the imbalance of power.”

“The thing I fail to do is fully comprehend what's given back to me by the audience. You would think you would be a performer partly so you could feel all the appreciation or adulation, but I haven't quite managed that yet.”

“I'm too shy, really to be able to hang out with my heroes for too long.”

“Make your own music. It can be done.”

“Ideals are not something I can control. It's not logic that convinces me of something, it's what my heart says. My heart has a way of involving me in things, which can only be good for the music.”

“I think the word soul has gotta come into it. Music that's created just for consuming lacks that soul, that swing, that feeling.”

“I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.”

“I've been through some dark times but I've experienced joy too. Now that joy can't be suppressed.”

“They sign a bunch of women, and they call it a movement. I don't like the way women in music have been identified as women first and musicians second.”

“Music is too important to be left to professionals.”

“I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world.”

“As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I've been traveling.”

“My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing.”

“Writing and singing does give me some kind of release from the demons of my past, it is a therapy of sorts, but to be honest, my marriage played a more important role in the acceptance of myself than performance has ever done.”

“I walked along that slippery slope where if you fail through lack of faith, you sell your soul to the devil.”

“Music is not a commodity, it's a resource.”

“I'm a perfectionist, which I think is a mistake.”

“I'm one of the few that comes from this vantage point: I never tried to get a record deal.”