Ani DiFranco Quotes

I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman army, But I can envision the mediocrity of my finest hour.

'Course numb is an old hat, old as my oldest memories.
See that one's my mother, and that one's my father, and that one in the hat, that's me.
It's a skill I'd hoped to abandon, when I got out on the open road,
But any more pent up emotion and I think I'm gonna explode.

when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable takeable body
an ever-increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
I don't need anyone to hold me
I can hold my own
I got highways for stretchmarks
see where I've grown
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then I could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like I.Q.
for every lie I unlearn
I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.

Because I know the biggest crime
Is just to throw up your hands
And say "This has nothing to do with me,
I just want to live as comfortably as I can.

Let's grow old and die together. Let's do it now.

Some of life's best lessons are learned at the worst times.

You've got your whole life to do something,
And that's not very long.
So why don't you give me a call
When you're willing to fight
For what you think is real,
For what you think is right.

I remember now how our bright spring green deepened.
With the years the seasons changed,
And we were lush as the underside of August.

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.

In any marginalized community, whether people identify themselves or not affects us all.

Maybe you can keep me from never being happy, but you're not going to stop me from HAVING FUN!

Fear is inky. Fear stains the white sheet of consciousness that one comes swaddled in and no amount of earthly scrubbing can make it completely clean again.

To put it opinionatedly, strumming an acoustic guitar is akin to scratching on the surface of a drum: antithetical to its nature.

Love is a piano dropped from a four story window and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
-Two Little Girls (Little Plastic Castle)

One breath at a time is an acceptable plan, she tells herself.