Alanis Morissette

At one point, I was just perceived as only being angry, but now I’m being perceived as angry, peaceful, and spiritual.

We’ll love you just the way you are if you’re perfect.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

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.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there’s been a liberating force that’s come from it.

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.

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

I expect the audience to come up to my level.

When the music changes, so does the dance.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

No, working is what will keep you alive.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra.

If it wasn’t for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers there’d be no Jazz. Wasn’t middle-class who said Let’s go hear Bird tonight.

Vocalists must study music and know everything an instrumentalist needs to know.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an’ my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.