Alanis Morissette

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.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

At one point, I was just perceived as only being angry, but now I’m being perceived as angry, peaceful, and spiritual.

I was born in ’74, so I missed out on all the great early ’60s and early ’70s.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

People couldn’t give an F about how many cars you got any more. It’s about the way the music sounds, where you’re going, the experience you’re going to hanging out with your friends, the type clothes that you’re wearing – all of that’s art.

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

I became a singer to sing my songs. They’re so hip who else is going to sing them?

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

However it goes, I’ll just keep playing. That’s where the basic satisfaction is at.

No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

Jazz without the Blues is like BBQ without the sauce.

Keeping your artistic self as creative as possible is a balancing act.

Jazz can only enhance the Classical side and Classical can only enhance the Jazz side.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

I was always exposed to music. Mom and dad would have the radio on constantly.