Alanis Morissette

I didn’t have high self-esteem when I was a teenager, as I think most teenagers don’t.

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.

Down the road, I’ll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.

In LA, where I live, it’s all about perfectionism. Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.

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

I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person.

His (Freddie Mercury) words got better quickly. There were some very overt lyrics. Don’t Stop Me Now is a good example. He was having a good time, and that was very much a cri de coeur. Some lyrics we wrote together like I’m Going Slightly Mad, which was funny. We had fun coming up with daft things, all those ridiculous phrases. I’d say it was Freddie’s actual musicality which was the cleverest thing of all, the notes, and his harmonic structure was quite brilliant. When he wrote The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, on the second album, he was crossing sections of six-part harmonies, and I thought: “Bloody hell, that is tricky stuff.” Then there’s The March Of The Black Queen, which is almost like prog-rock, and so outrageously complicated that I can’t even remember the arrangement myself. When you write songs that complex, you have to work hard at it, and it did invoke a lot of head-scratching. But then he’d come up with Killer Queen or, later on, lots of simple things like Crazy Little Thing. He had it on all sides. Freddie evolved. I always called him ‘the man who invented himself’. I think the talent was innate, but he dug deep inside himself and forced it out. His determination was quite something.

It is a little insulting that you’re trying to appeal to adult women voters the same way that Mattel attempts to appeal to eight year olds. And at least Barbie’s pink bus had the good sense to unfold into a sweet hot tub and party den combo. … The only way it could be even more patronizing is if its wheels were giant NuvaRings and they refused to let women drive it.

I get more people approaching me about how good I was in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ than being in Coldplay.

If you want to be a screenwriter, take an acting class to get a sense of what you’re asking actors to do. Learning other skills will help you communicate with people and respect what they do.

You have to be quite stupid to act.

This Velvet Mafia thing is just another homophobic, nasty kind of thing that jealous queens make up.

There’s so many parts of your life, you know? People say that you don’t get any better after the age of about forty or something like that, as a performer. I find all that to be a misconception. I don’t feel bad about the way I present stuff. The calendar and the mirror – they’re bastards.

Student debt is like HPV – if you go to college, you are most likely to get it, and it will follow you for the rest of your life.

Healthcare is like a pair of gym shorts. Even if it covers nearly all it is supposed to, you’re still left with some problematic gaps and terrible things can happen.

When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this person in between me and what I want to do?’ If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.

I love connecting with people, playing games, music and finding ways to help or give back to communities/organizations…Having my own talk show where I get to do all of these things is pretty much a dream job!

We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise.

There’s not much room for eccentricity in Hollywood, and eccentricity is what’s sexy in people.

I’m just a regular girl. Some days I’m super strong; some days I’m super insecure. I just speak my truth and if people like it, they like it, and if they bash it, they bash it.

I want to experience Dallas. It’s a new city where I see new business opportunities.