Top 100 Ani DiFranco Quotes
#1. There isn't much I have to say, that I wouldn't rather just shut up and do.
Ani DiFranco
#2. Science chases money
and money chases its tail
and the best minds of my generation can't make bail.
But the bacteria are coming
that's my prediction.
It's the answer to this culture
of the quick-fix prescription.
Ani DiFranco
#3. 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.
Ani DiFranco
#4. A little bird told me that jumping is easy and the falling is fun, right up until you hit sidewalk shivering and stunned.
Ani DiFranco
#5. I'm the color me happy girl, Miss live and let live. And when they're out for blood, I always give.
Ani DiFranco
#6. And I was shocked to see the mistakes of each generation will just fade like a radio station, if we drive out of range.
Ani DiFranco
#8. I think the gay community should get smart and drop the word 'marriage.' Do you really need to change every right-wing Christian to make sure you get your equal rights? Eyes on the prize, we should be sticking to getting equal rights.
Ani DiFranco
#9. Maybe you can keep me from never being happy, but you're not going to stop me from HAVING FUN!
Ani DiFranco
#10. There are so many things that we have to be very concerned about. But I always come back to feminism.
Ani DiFranco
#11. What makes you so lavish that you can afford to spend every sober moment feeling angry and bored?
Ani DiFranco
#12. Imagine you're a girl,
just trying to finally come clean,
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling.
Ani DiFranco
#13. Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. You know, it doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define, but there you are, right there, in the meantime.
Ani DiFranco
#14. When I need to wipe my face, I use the back of my hand, And I like to take up space just because I can, And I use my dress to wipe up my drink. I care less and less what people think.
Ani DiFranco
#15. Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about, but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society.
Ani DiFranco
#16. Love sets fire to your schedule, And then calls an end to time.
Ani DiFranco
#17. I found religion in the greeting card aisle now i know hallmark was right
Ani DiFranco
#18. And this vague little smile is my all purpose expression the meaning of which I will leave to your discretion.
Ani DiFranco
#19. If you're not getting happier as you get older, then you're fuckin' up
Ani DiFranco
#20. My life may not be something special But it's never been lived before.
Ani DiFranco
#21. And god help you if you are an ugly girl course too pretty is also your doom cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room and god help you if you are a pheonix and you dare to rise up from the ash a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying back
Ani DiFranco
#23. Then I show up steady ready and proud and I find I've forgotten how to talk out loud. Isn't it just like you to bring me to my knees?
Ani DiFranco
#24. I've been collecting some more high-end guitars. I have an old Martin D28 from the '60s, a beautiful, classic Martin that I know I played on 'Mariachi.'
Ani DiFranco
#25. Maybe we are both good people who've done some bad things.
Ani DiFranco
#26. My parents split up when I was young, and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way.
Ani DiFranco
#27. I make such a good statistic, somebody should study me now; somebody's gotta be interested in how I feel, just cause I'm here, and I'm real.
Ani DiFranco
#28. Love was always the goal, and my point every step of the way was that nothing is wrong with love, no matter what flavor it comes in.
Ani DiFranco
#29. I mean, playing music at home and writing and hanging out with my guitar is kind of medicinal for me, but when I bring the songs to people on stage, it's very joyous.
Ani DiFranco
#30. In a man's world, I am a woman by birth and after 19 times around I have found - they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth.
Ani DiFranco
#31. The bathroom mirror has not budged, the woman who lives there can tell the truth from the stuff they say and looks me in the eye- says do you prefer the easy way? No? Well ok then, dont cry.
Ani DiFranco
#33. I would like to perfect the art of being studiously aloof
Ani DiFranco
#34. Promiscuity does not scare me as long as she is savvy and self possessed when puberty comes to call. My aim is to simply raise my daughter to be secure in her self worth and capable of happiness all on her own.
Ani DiFranco
#35. You rhapsodize about beauty,
and my eyes glaze.
Everything that I love is ugly.
I mean really, you would be amazed.
Just do me a favor,
it's the least that you can do,
just don't treat me like I am
something that happened to you.
Ani DiFranco
#36. All the wrong people have the power of suggestion and the freedom of the press is meaningless if nobody asks a question.
Ani DiFranco
#37. Privilege is a headache, that you don't know that you don't have.
Ani DiFranco
#38. People talk about my image like I come in two dimensions, like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind, like what I happen to be wearing the day that someone takes my picture is my new statement for all womankind.
Ani DiFranco
#39. Life is a sleazy stranger, who looks vaguely familiar; flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar.
Ani DiFranco
#40. I used to be a superhero; no one could touch me, not even myself. You are like a phone booth I somehow stumbled into, and now look at me - I am just like everybody else.
Ani DiFranco
#41. 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.
Ani DiFranco
#42. Someone's got to be interested in how I feel, just because I'm here and I'm real.
Ani DiFranco
#43. Subtract out the impact and the fall is all you get. So here's two beers to remember why and three more to forget.
Ani DiFranco
#44. But in the garden of simple, where all of us are nameless, you were never anything but beautiful to me.
Ani DiFranco
#45. At night when you're asleep, self-hatred's going to creep in. And you can blame it on the devil, the one who's bed you sleep in.
Ani DiFranco
#46. Before Katrina, you didn't see criticism of the Bush administration in the media. Here they are, stealing elections, enacting illegal wars, huge crimes against humanity and democracy, and you didn't even see criticism. It wasn't until Katrina that people started to come down on them.
Ani DiFranco
#47. As any mom knows, having a baby is an extremely creative act and to love and create a baby, it's on par with any other creative act that we could come up with.
Ani DiFranco
#48. When all you can think of is your own personal problems, you have nothing to give to your society. If you're trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from, you can't go march on Washington.
Ani DiFranco
#49. I am not an angry girl
But it seems like I've got everyone fooled
Every time I say something they find hard to hear
They chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear
Ani DiFranco
#50. What I like way better than LGBT in terms of labeling sexuality actually is a scheme that comes to me from my friend Animal Prufrock wherein one is identified not by what they supposedly "are" but rather by what they are into. Which brings us to the terms hemosexual, shemosexual, and mosexual.
Ani DiFranco
#51. You've decided to love me for eternity, I'm still deciding who I want to be today.
Ani DiFranco
#52. 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.
Ani DiFranco
#53. Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'
Ani DiFranco
#54. We are taught to view pain as an enemy, not a teacher. But pain is the right hand of growth and transformation. Pain is in the history of all human wisdom.
Ani DiFranco
#55. 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.
Ani DiFranco
#56. What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to.
Ani DiFranco
#57. 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.
Ani DiFranco
#58. They can call me crazy if I fail, all the chance that I need, is one-in-a-million and they can call me brilliant if I succeed.
Ani DiFranco
#59. I wonder what you look like under your t-shirt. I wonder what you sound like when you're not wearing words. I wonder what we have when we're not pretending ...
Ani DiFranco
#60. Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.
Ani DiFranco
#61. We get a little further from perfection,
each year on the road,
I guess that's what they call character,
I guess that's just the way it goes,
better to be dusty than polished,
like some store window mannequin,
why don't you touch me where i'm rusty,
let me stain your hands
Ani DiFranco
#62. You are so lame. You always disappoint me. It's kind of like our running joke but it's really not funny and I just want you to live up to the image of you I create.
Ani DiFranco
#63. In any marginalized community, whether people identify themselves or not affects us all.
Ani DiFranco
#64. Well, it's really gratifying to me to have a stage and some bright lights and a microphone. They're tools and opportunities, and to be able to just pull somebody up on stage with me and point at them is a great feeling.
Ani DiFranco
#65. I fight with love and i laugh with rage ... you gotta live light enough to see the humor, and long enough to see some change ...
Ani DiFranco
#66. Goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine. And the little plastic castle is a surprise everytime.
Ani DiFranco
#67. Those who call the shots are never in the line of fire.
Ani DiFranco
#68. Taken out of context, I must seem so strange
Ani DiFranco
#69. They see me as a symbol, and not a human being. That way they can kill me, say it's not murder it's a metaphor.
Ani DiFranco
#70. I did not design this game; I did not name the stakes. I just happen to like apples; and I am not afraid of snakes.
Ani DiFranco
#71. I know men are delicate origami creatures who need women to unfold them, hold them when they cry. But I am tired of being your savior and I am tired of telling you why.
Ani DiFranco
#72. So many of us, myself included, need to keep our sense of personal outrage in check. Each human beings position on the planet is one of intense humility.
Ani DiFranco
#73. The stronger I am in my personal life, the more energy I have to look outward, to address my society.
Ani DiFranco
#74. 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.'
Ani DiFranco
#75. When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong; they taught me different was wrong.
Ani DiFranco
#76. I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial.
Ani DiFranco
#77. I'm sounding out the silence, avoiding all the words.
Ani DiFranco
#78. Don't tell me what they did to you as though you had no choice. Tell me, isn't that your picture? Isn't that your voice.
Ani DiFranco
#79. Actually I don't know if honesty is a strength or some kind of weakness.
Ani DiFranco
#80. I'm searching, as we all are, for ways to feel good about myself. Certainly, looking in the mirror doesn't do it!
Ani DiFranco
#81. I never try to imagine the future. I kinda think it's a waste of time. I live in the now.
Ani DiFranco
#82. I walk like I'm on a mission 'cause that's the way I groove. I got more and more to do and less and less to prove.
Ani DiFranco
#83. No one's gonna sympathize when we crash, they'll say you hit what you head for, you get what you ask.
Ani DiFranco
#84. Having more exposure is kind of a bittersweet thing for me, honestly, because it's nice to have a little more job security in life now.
Ani DiFranco
#85. You broke me bodily.
The heart ain't the half of it,
And I'll never learn to laugh at it
In my good natured way.
In fact, I'm laughing less in general,
But I learned a lot at my own funeral.
And I knew you'd be the death of me,
So I guess that's the price I pay.
Ani DiFranco
#86. Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there's nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.
Ani DiFranco
#87. If you like it, let it be, and if you don't please do the same.
Ani DiFranco
#89. God help you if you are a phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying past
Ani DiFranco
#90. Words are some of the most powerful and important things I know ... Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger
and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.
Ani DiFranco
#91. I'm pretty much a workaholic, but when you're doing what you love it's hard to think of a reason to stop.
Ani DiFranco
#92. I don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do than survive.
Ani DiFranco
#93. When you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance, you have to believe that mercy has it's own country and that it's round and borderless ...
Ani DiFranco
#94. While out in TV Nation, under darkening skies, the resistance is just waiting to be organized.
Ani DiFranco
#95. Stepped out into the cold, collar high, under the slate gray sky. The air was smoking and the streets were dry, and I wasn't joking when I said goodbye.
Ani DiFranco
#96. I can jump ship and swim
that the ocean will hold me,
that there's got to be more
than this boat I'm in.
Ani DiFranco
#97. We negotiate with chaos for some sense of satisfaction.
Ani DiFranco
#98. I always feel I have to take a stand,
And there's always someone on hand
To hate me for standing there.
I always feel I have to open my mouth,
And every time I do, I offend someone, somewhere.
Ani DiFranco
#99. Somedays the line I walk turns out to be straight - Other days the line tends to deviate.
Ani DiFranco
#100. We're led by denial like lambs to slaughter, serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water.
Ani DiFranco
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
