Alanis Morissette

I’m a liability to them – I’m a woman, I’m empowered, I’m an artist. I’ve had executives who can’t come to my shows they’re so scared of me. I’ve been a thorn in many people’s sides just by existing.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

Unless I really loved it and felt really passionate about it, I would just kind of abort the song and start a new one.

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.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.

I’ve had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I’ve had lots of guys call me up. I’ve gotten two or three commissions to write things. I’ve written lots of movie scores.

If you can’t play the Blues you might as well hang it up.

I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

Audiences are smart. They are not going to come out to see you unless you are honest.

I have been doing music all my life so everyday when I get up I expect music will be part of it.

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.