Quotes by Women Songwriters

Are you all meat-eaters? What the fuck is wrong with you people?

And the last words I heard him say were
I shall return for you my love on Christmas Day...

I always said I never wanted to write about love, but then I went and did that anyway.

First they hurt me then desert me,
I'm left alone, all alone
There's no house that I can call my home.

The word workaholic is so severe, but I do focus a lot on my work... I think a lot about what I'm doing in all aspects of my life, what am I trying to achieve here, am I happy with this? Music is like a mirror in front of you. You're exposing everything, but surely that's better than suppressing.... You have to dig deep and that can be hard for anybody, no matter what profession. I feel that I need to actually push myself to the limit to feel happy with the end result.

While Jesus is saving, I'm spending all my days
in backgrounds and landscapes with the languages of saints.
While people are spinning like toys on Christmas day,
I'm inside a still life with the other absentee.

I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world. Y'know, I'm a very strong person and I think that's why actually I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature'.

This is how it works —
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath.

I see the Time and Motion clock,
Is sayin' nearly noon,
I 'spec me squirt of water,
Will come flyin' at me soon,
And then me spray of pellets,
Will nearly break me leg,
And I'll bite the wire nettin'
And lay one more bloody egg.

I went down to London with the idea that I was going to do vocals over this crazy, crazy trip-hop digital beat. Within two or three months, I heard Hunky Dory by David Bowie and that changed me in one way, and I realized what I actually wanted was to have an E Street Band — individuals, not session musicians.

The life of Liverpool is commerce; it is a city of warehouses and shops.

Katherine Lee Bates

I maintain that the best song is the one that ends up on the album. So whether I've written it or I haven't, I'm very comfortable with both.

Those of us with ravaged faces, lacking in the social graces, desperately remained at home, inventing lovers on the phone.

Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued; Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them?

Hitler was a good man and it takes some f—-ing balls for someone to say this out loud this day and age, especially for a public figure like myself, but you know what? SOMEONE NEEDS TO SPEAK THE TRUTH WITHOUT FEAR! Otherwise the dark cabal who currently control the world and all of the world bankers will continue to feed you their lies, feed off your emotions, take advantage of your emotions and will continue to keep you THEIR SLAVE!

I'm against the idea that rock stars have to live a life that's completely understandable or predictable to their audience....Maybe I'll just be the mysterious figure that'll never be able to truly be defined. Maybe that's what my thing is.

One needs to take one's time because good work takes time. But it must be worth the wait in the end.

I remember when you were born, it was dawn and the storm settled near my belly. And I rolled in the grass and spit out the gas, and I lit a match and the void went flash. And the sky split and the planets hit, balls of jade dropped and existence stopped.

The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most - it's a monk's sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.

Don't count on me
I engineer on every
Move we make from here
I'll take the lead
You take the pain
You see, I engineered
This game.

We are the number one offender
Of specieism and yet
Here we are reaching out for aliens
Looking for our salvation.
Pity our emptiness
Save our souls.

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality.

I constantly get people telling me I should be selling as much as Katie Melua... but there's a reason she sells that many and I don't - she makes music that's easy on the ear and even easier on the brain. She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road. I'm not keen to make things too easy for anyone. I like to provoke a response, whether that's someone telling me they love what I do or throwing a bottle at me. The trouble is that the bottle-throwing faction won't buy the album. You've immediately limited your audience.

So we must love, while these moments are still called today, take part in the pain of this passion play, stretching our youth as we must, until we are ashes to dust, until time makes history of us.

Ask who wants to live to be a hundred, and the answer is the person who is ninety-nine.