Alanis Morissette Quotes

The first record I spent five years writing and it was an amalgamation of all the things that happened in my life from the time I was fifteen to the time I was twenty.

Creating the album 'VIBES' has been the biggest life lesson I have ever learned.

I have been taking every step toward the future every day through making many paintings and sculptures with my deep emotion hidden in my life.

I don't think of work between albums. Of course, I go through regular life and I live and I experience different things, good and bad, and it does help me, but I don't think about writing or what I'm gonna do with whatever's going on while I'm going through it.

Whatever happens in my life, whether I stand up or I fall down, whatever the case, I'm going to use it in my art. Why? Because I'm an artist and I have to.

The funny thing about making this record and being away from the girls and on my own in LA is that it allowed me to reflect on how much we've accomplished.

I can't play anything until I find something that connects to my life, something I can carry as my secret map or code for the character.

All of my books come from something that I happen to be working out at a given point in my life. It's kind of self-therapy.

Anything that's really made an impact on my life, I want to get in the studio and write about it.

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

Yes, the more I go through life I realize that there's really no separation between practice and art at all. The two things more and more become one rather than two different aspects of my life.

The more I see and know about life, the more ideas I have and the more I want to make art.

I spent the first 22 years of my life absorbing everything, like a big disgusting cell, and now I'm disgorging it with jokes added out into the world. That's a really gross metaphor.

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.'

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

It's such a private thing - 'my process' - I can just say that the work that I do is like therapy between me and the character.

I don't think I could have tackled 'The Pura Principle' until now. It takes me about twenty years to come to term with any difficult period in my life, to get enough of a grasp on it to fictionalize it.

You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

I've been dancing all my life, but I never did it seriously.

I don't quite know what a record is anymore. I don't quite know how to describe it. Don't know how to define it yet, so I'm just letting it gestate, and grow and see if maybe I'll get a better sense of what a record is.

The more I do in my life, the more I can write music about new experiences.

I'm interested in trying to explore what I think is the truth at a given time in my life, and part of the process of being honest is - in my mind - talking about the idea that you're watching a movie. You're sitting here watching a movie. And I like that. It appeals to me intellectually, and also in a way I can't even explain.

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

It's really such a personal journey, making a record, but even more so writing the songs.