Quotes By Ani DiFranco

We have to be able to criticise what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if your not trying to make something better, than as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.

A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous 'girl power' sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it's a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.

I've been trying to learn how to not be so conflicted about things like my own anger. I've always had a place in my music for my anger as a way of compensating for not having a mechanism to express it in my everyday life. So I've been trying to be more true to myself, and that helps me to chill out a little bit. But politically, uh-uh. No.

I've been saying the Occupy Movement has got the ball rolling, and now we need to take the fight to the great indoors!

Art is why I get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know I don't think its fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.

Why do you think I write these feminist songs, to try and teach myself to respect myself. You know, it's not because I'm a hero.

Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

Taking me seriously is a big mistake. I certainly wouldn't.

Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.

Someone's got to be interested in how I feel, just because I'm here and I'm real.

Just let me go, we have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if you're not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.

God forbid you be an ugly girl, 'course too pretty is also your doom, 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.

In order to keep anything cultural, logical, or ideological, you have to reinvent the reality of it.

My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it's very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.

These days, my main guitar amps have been Magnatone. They're beautiful. Magnatones have actual tremolo, which I recently learned about guitar amps. Often what guitar amps call vibrato is really just a volume Up and Down. But Magnatone has a true vibrato, which is pitch bending. And so, it's just a lush sound.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.

My songs are just little letters to me.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.

They taught me different was wrong.

Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot.