ANI DIFRANCO

Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

I'm not one of those people who has an act.

People need something or someone to fasten themselves to in order to reassure themselves that they are real.

Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.

I have something to prove, as long as I know there's something that needs improvement, and you know that everytime I move, I make a woman's movement.

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.

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.'

I've been a long time coming, and I'll be a long time gone. You've got your whole life to do something, and that's not very long.

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.

I don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do then survive.

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.

Taken out of context I must seem so strange.

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

I basically get stereotyped a lot in terms of being a girl and writing 'chick' music for teenage girls or something. I think, if anything, the press kind of, because of my gender and my age, tends to kind of relegate my work to this sort of special-interest group. It's part of the cultural dynamic, I guess.

All of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general.

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.

I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.

When I first started writing songs and being very explicit, it was hard, but one of the main things people respond to in my writing is that 'just say it' attitude of my songs. There really is nothing personal or private; it's all universal, if you can just find the courage to be open about your life.

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.

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.

Music has as many roles as people make it.

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.

There isn't much I have to say, that I wouldn't rather just shut up and do.

Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked 'other.'

It's great being your own boss, but then, you know, you make your own mistakes, you know, and you own them. You know, so it's empowering, and it's also humbling along the way.