Alanis Morissette

And I always laugh at that, because I think I’ve always been doing what I want to do since Day 1.

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.

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

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

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.

I did Jonathon Ross last year and he said ‘do people do impressions of David Brent?’ and I went ‘well, they can’t really because he’s such a normal bloke’. Then, after the show, me and Ross are walking through the car park and this bloke jumps out and goes ‘der-ner-ner-ner-ner’, does the David Brent dance and runs away. Jonathon Ross was in hysterics: ‘all that shit you came out with and then some bloke jumps out and runs away’. But on the whole it doesn’t really happen.

It’s VH1, it’s everywhere, and you know music is just the world right now. People love music.

I think everyone’s intentions are to become a performer at first. But by the time I was in high school and college, I discovered that I liked writing and that I was probably a little better at it.

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don’t know anything.

I couldn’t stand that my husband was being unfaithful. I am Raquel Welch – understand?

[On how she handles people who disagree with her] I’ve learned the art of ignoring people. When people give you some piece of direction you don’t like, you just nod and ignore it. Just don’t do it! Most people want to be heard and acknowledged, anyway. Just do what you want to do.

When David Beckham got a tattoo of Jesus, the response from most soccer fans was, ‘That’s huge for Jesus. That’s a big deal for him’.

Who can wear the skimpiest outfit? I mean come on. These young girls are talented singers, they don’t need that, but they feel they have to be in competition to have the least covering. That’s the saddest thing.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you

There aren’t any hard women, only soft men.

I’m a sucker for those sweeping love stories. When I read the script (The Notebook), I couldn’t stop crying! I just had such a powerful, instantaneous reaction – it was written so well.

I think I’d make a pretty good girlfriend.

I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society…unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.

At least when the race starts he knows where they’re all at, ’cause they’re in front of him. Better to do it today than tomorrow.

At this time when I turn 50, because so there’s many of my friends and family who didn’t get to see 50-years-old, and so, I’m celebrating for them too.