Alanis Morissette

I’ll be writing songs till I die. There’s just no question.

I’m really clear about what my life mission is now. There’s no more depression or lethargy, and I feel like I’ve returned to the athlete I once was. I’m integrating all the parts of me – jock, musician, writer, poet, philosopher – and becoming stronger as a result.

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 guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

Music opens up minds to dream great dreams about where you can go and what you can do.

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.

I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?

In order to complete your cycle, a musician needs to write; document what is going through your mind and where you are harmonically, theoretically, historically.