Healing for me is being able to sit next to the butcher and say 'Yes, I’m sitting next to the butcher now,' instead of saying 'there is no butcher'.
Tori AmosRead
There are things that I refuse to deal with except through my music... because I don't trust humanity that much, and I don't know if I trust me that much. But I trust the songs.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the belief that music can serve as a safe means to process emotions and experiences.
Tori Amos suggests that she uses music as a medium to navigate her feelings and experiences because of a deep-seated skepticism towards humanity and herself. This indicates that, amidst uncertainty and distrust, she finds solace and reliability in the artistic expression of her songs, thereby highlighting the therapeutic power of music.
Themes
MusicTrustHumanityExpressionEmotionArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity at a local arts festival, one might quote this to emphasize the power of music.
More from Tori Amos
All quotes →When you stop putting yourself on the line, and you don't touch your own heart, how do you expect to touch other people?
Tori AmosRead
If you can't create physical life, you find a life force. If that's in music, that's in music. I started to find this deep, primitive rhythm, and I started to move to it. And I held hands with sorrow, and I danced with her, and we giggled a bit.
Tori AmosRead
I don't want to sit on the sidelines and not value the gift of being here. Instead of the idea of time ticking away, the grains of sand running out, I try to think of time as giving me another grain of sand, another gift. So time passing is an accumulation, rather than a diminishing.
Tori AmosRead
I don't mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else's object.
Tori AmosRead
For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. I made a conscious choice when I put (the song) 'Me and a Gun' on the record not to stay a victim anymore.
Tori AmosRead
Similar quotes
Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as it falls to the ground, and it felt like three years Waterside in Tarbean, with a hollowness inside you and hands that ached from the bitter cold.
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If contemporary artists sincerely seek to be original, unique, and new, they should begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time.
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I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.
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To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.
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My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'
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I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor.
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