Quotes By Alanis Morissette

The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.

When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life. So I bit my tongue. I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

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

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.

I get angry at myself for staying in relationships way too long.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they're here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

I need to be performing. I need to be acting. I need to be designing a condo and ripping down walls and buying new plates and looking at fashion magazines. There always has to be some movement in the artistic department for me to not get really, really low.

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.

Infidelity is a deal breaker for me. I've broken up with people over it. You can't do monogamy 90 percent of the time.

The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY will always be his boss.

Trauma happens in relationships, so it can only be healed in relationships. Art can't provide healing. It can be cathartic and therapeutic but a relationship is a three-part journey.

The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it.

I think quite spiritually of myself. I feel like I'm here to support the human evolution.

What influenced me was Tori Amos, who was unapologetic about expressing anger through music, and Sinead O'Connor. Those two in particular were really moving for me, and very inspiring, before I wrote 'Jagged Little Pill.'

I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance.

Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it.

I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.

Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.

Partnership is the way. Dictatorial win-lose is so old-school.

But I love to entertain. My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly.

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

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to - in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet - very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

Getting married and starting a family has been a lifelong goal and one that I have persevered through different paths up to it!

For four to six months at a time, I would barely eat. I lived on a diet of Melba toast, carrots, and black coffee.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

America's a very traumatized society.

I just feel compelled to continue to be transparent. It just really levels the playing field and eradicates the shame that I have, or that one might have, about being human. So I'm going to just keep going.

My greatest environments in which I can grow, or grow up, is in personal romantic relationships with a man.