Tori Amos Quotes

"Everybody knows you can conjure anything by the dark of the moon."

"You don’t need a spaceship.
They don’t know you’ve already lived on the other side of the galaxy."

"It was all about fire, claiming my fire," Tori continues to explain. "Claiming the female part. The feminine that's been so shamed and so `this is a correct feminine expression,' `this is a naughty feminine expression,' `this is a mother feminine expression.' So she began to read about Mary Magdalene; Amos calls her ``the blueprint for women which was never carried over and passed down.'' She sees Magdalene as representing woman as a passionate, compassionate being."

"They're about recognizing that an extreme kind of viciousness is being played out even as you exchange 'honeysuckle,'" she said. "They're about the things going on in a woman's heart; the things expressed and the things hidden. They're about the breaking down of the patriarchy within relationships and the idea of women claiming their own power."

"I think you have to know who you are, get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it. I don't want to renounce my dark side. The truth has always held an enormous interest for me. Everything is therapeutic, no matter what you do."
Tori Amos, Connection Magazine, 6/98

"God is a misogynist. When you really spend time and look at things God said, if you have a brain on you, you've got to raise an eyebrow and say this God is a macho pig. I mean, if Sylvester Stallone said this stuff we'd be giving him a very hard time and he has said some of this stuff and we have given him a hard time -- he deserved it. But the point is the Christian god hasn't honoured women. Sorry, the cat's out of the bag and it's just not cool so it's something we have to address..."

"I can't have discussions about it anymore, I just can't. When someone asks me if I've found Jesus, I say, 'Yeah, I saw him at a Nirvana concert a couple of years ago.' It's like, Jesus has got things to do, he's got a ten o'clock. He's not going to fix things for me, I have to fix things for myself, so I try and have a sense of humor about it and nobody finds my humor very amusing. We've just got to lighten up on the savior bit, folks. You know, get off the cross, we need the wood."

"Mary Magdalene is really someone who has made the church very uncomfortable," Amos said. "That is why you have two Marys in the Bible: onethat is very sexual, and one that is virtuous and spiritual, cut off from her sexuality. "In doing so, they take away all her wisdom. So instead of people having to align with one or the other, the Marys need to become married -- joined together."

Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again" (Little Earthquakes)I have a lot of questions right now. I know it's a free-will planet. Things happen. But you know that saying, Bad things don't happen to good people? That's a painful lie, and it hits you on such a core level. I know now that I have an appreciation for the miracle of life that I didn't have, but I don't believe in the saying that it all happens for the best...

"That's why I sing "God, sometimes you just don't come through/ You need a woman to look after you." The God-force must be feminized, perceived more as a God-Goddess. Jesus, his mother, 'his church' all must be redefined. Especially a figure like Mary Magdalene, who I and so many Christian women were taught to despise, because she was a prostitute. Because of that we had great problems coming to terms with the prostitute in ourselves, which again, is something the Church teaches us to deny, and something my song, 'The Wrong Band' is about when I sing. 'Ginger is always sincere/But not to one man.'

"Everybody knows you can conjure anything by the dark of the moon."
"You don’t need a spaceship. They don’t know you’ve already lived on the other side of the galaxy."
"Many scholars believe that Mary Magdalene was a high priestess who came from the cult of Isis," Amos explains. "She wasn't this 'anything for a fiver, honey.' She was a peer to Jesus." In her new song "Muhammed, My Friend," Amos is inspired by this idea when she sings, "It's time to tell the world/ We both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem."	"It was all about fire, claiming my fire," Tori continues to explain. "Claiming the female part. The feminine that's been so shamed and so `this is a correct feminine expression,' `this is a naughty feminine expression,' `this is a mother feminine expression.' So she began to read about Mary Magdalene; Amos calls her ``the blueprint for women which was never carried over and passed down.'' She sees Magdalene as representing woman as a passionate, compassionate being."
"They're about recognizing that an extreme kind of viciousness is being played out even as you exchange 'honeysuckle,'" she said. "They're about the things going on in a woman's heart; the things expressed and the things hidden. They're about the breaking down of the patriarchy within relationships and the idea of women claiming their own power."	"I think you have to know who you are, get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it. I don't want to renounce my dark side. The truth has always held an enormous interest for me. Everything is therapeutic, no matter what you do." Tori Amos, Connection Magazine, 6/98
"God is a misogynist. When you really spend time and look at things God said, if you have a brain on you, you've got to raise an eyebrow and say this God is a macho pig. I mean, if Sylvester Stallone said this stuff we'd be giving him a very hard time and he has said some of this stuff and we have given him a hard time -- he deserved it. But the point is the Christian god hasn't honoured women. Sorry, the cat's out of the bag and it's just not cool so it's something we have to address..."	"I can't have discussions about it anymore, I just can't. When someone asks me if I've found Jesus, I say, 'Yeah, I saw him at a Nirvana concert a couple of years ago.' It's like, Jesus has got things to do, he's got a ten o'clock. He's not going to fix things for me, I have to fix things for myself, so I try and have a sense of humor about it and nobody finds my humor very amusing. We've just got to lighten up on the savior bit, folks. You know, get off the cross, we need the wood."
"Mary Magdalene is really someone who has made the church very uncomfortable," Amos said. "That is why you have two Marys in the Bible: onethat is very sexual, and one that is virtuous and spiritual, cut off from her sexuality. "In doing so, they take away all her wisdom. So instead of people having to align with one or the other, the Marys need to become married -- joined together."	Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again" (Little Earthquakes)I have a lot of questions right now. I know it's a free-will planet. Things happen. But you know that saying, Bad things don't happen to good people? That's a painful lie, and it hits you on such a core level. I know now that I have an appreciation for the miracle of life that I didn't have, but I don't believe in the saying that it all happens for the best...
"That's why I sing "God, sometimes you just don't come through/ You need a woman to look after you." The God-force must be feminized, perceived more as a God-Goddess. Jesus, his mother, 'his church' all must be redefined. Especially a figure like Mary Magdalene, who I and so many Christian women were taught to despise, because she was a prostitute. Because of that we had great problems coming to terms with the prostitute in ourselves, which again, is something the Church teaches us to deny, and something my song, 'The Wrong Band' is about when I sing. 'Ginger is always sincere/But not to one man.'	The shadow side of that was Mary Magdalene, who we've always been taught was a whore because that's the camp I was in. But why did I have to be divided from the two Marys? Shouldn't it be about the balance? It should be about a wholeness, but it's about division.