Michelle Shocked Quotes

I accepted a change in my life. I didn`t choose that change and those are the best changes to make.

I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.

I think the word soul has gotta come into it. Music that`s created just for consuming lacks that soul, that swing, that feeling.

Writing and singing does give me some kind of release from the demons of my past, it is a therapy of sorts, but to be honest, my marriage played a more important role in the acceptance of myself than performance has ever done.

The thing I fail to do is fully comprehend what`s given back to me by the audience. You would think you would be a performer partly so you could feel all the appreciation or adulation, but I haven`t quite managed that yet.

Make your own music. It can be done.

I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world.

Music is too important to be left to professionals.

I`m too shy, really to be able to hang out with my heroes for too long.

They sign a bunch of women, and they call it a movement. I don`t like the way women in music have been identified as women first and musicians second.

As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I`ve been traveling.

People might say I`m difficult, but did you ever hear anyone describe a label as `difficult`? By nature, artists should challenge. When they call you difficult, it is a reflection of the imbalance of power.

My grandmother had a Miss Margaret`s School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they`re dancing fools. It`s the only vice they have - dancing.

Ideals are not something I can control. It`s not logic that convinces me of something, it`s what my heart says. My heart has a way of involving me in things, which can only be good for the music.

I`ve been through some dark times but I`ve experienced joy too. Now that joy can`t be suppressed.

Music is not a commodity, it`s a resource.

I walked along that slippery slope where if you fail through lack of faith, you sell your soul to the devil.

I`m one of the few that comes from this vantage point: I never tried to get a record deal.

I`m a perfectionist, which I think is a mistake.