Alanis Morissette

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

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.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

In the past, I had workaholic issues.

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.

Never have doubted it, even when the plane crash happened. I wasn’t mad at God. I just knew that there was a reason that I didn’t know about why it happened.

Any single part of Brexit is a mountainous task and that is before you get to the tiny little bits that you understand that we haven’t even thought might be a problem. John Oliver

It may become Bob as time goes on. My dad was a Bob and his father was a Bob. That seems to be the sort of cheery thing that you do to octogenarians, but not yet, no.

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 think it’s easier for the general public to embrace me in a negative way. You have people who already have a perception of me that says I’m a bad person.

Besides, I’m a gypsy at heart and I like to travel around.

Trump’s presidency is like one of his handshakes: it pulls you in whether you like it or not.

[on turning down a role in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’] I didn’t really fancy sitting in a hotel room in Los Angeles for nine weeks for two minutes on screen, to be honest. I don’t really want to be an actor. I want to write and direct. I’ve been offered about ten British films. Obviously all shit. I was offered one with Johnny Depp, but again, it was a small character part, and I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ No one’s ever watched someone in seven films for one minute and said, ‘Yeah, give him his own film’…it doesn’t happen.”

There’s nothing wrong with getting 20 million viewers, but I think there’s something wrong with aiming at getting 20 million viewers, because then you have to take away all the things that will offend, and you’ll end up with something so anodyne that it just washes over you for half an hour. I imagine The Office was also one of the most hated shows on television, that some people passionately hated it. But that’s better, for me. David Bowie said that after Let’s Dance, which is his biggest album ever and obviously not his best, he was doing these stadium gigs and looked out at the audience and suddenly realized that he had Phil Collins fans instead of Iggy Pop fans. And that’s how I feel about everything I do: I want Iggy Pop fans.

Now they’re getting so politically correct you can’t even stick your tongue out at somebody.

I wrote my own verses. Anything I did, I wrote myself.

I am looking for a man I couldn’t beat in a cage fight.

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.

I don’t have a sound bite for everything.

People have got to let their bodies breathe a little bit more. That’s the great thing about being a pompous, jumped-up rock god. There’s plenty of air around you.