Alanis Morissette

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

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.

It’s when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn’t work for me.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.

In the past, I had workaholic issues.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

When you make a sound, it carries on to infinity. Sound is a vibration. Vibration is energy. All of that survives in space long after we’re dead. When I walk on stage at the Wiener Staatsoper, I can feel the footsteps of Chopin and Rachmaninov.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say anything sarcastic.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues’, they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.