The worst pain in the world is shame. I spend a lot of time trying to not do anything bad to anyone, but you can't live your life and not hurt people.
Fiona Apple
I got drunk when I was five. Everybody gets drunk before they're 21.
I can bake. I made myself some nice French fries once. But otherwise I just eat out. Lots of salad bars.
I feel like I'm 100 years old. I can't tell you what I did today. I can't tell you what I did for seven years. I can't tell you. It happens so seamlessly - I'm just floating along and seven years go by.
Men are my bread and butter. It's what I live for! I have no shame about that.
When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be even lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anybody or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.
My whole life, people have been saying, Why are you so angry?
Life is all about the friendship and the love and the music. It sounds silly, but it is. I want to have that experience as much as I can as an adult, not as a kid doing something that people are telling her she has to do. If anyone gets in my way, I'm going to get them out of my way.
How can you go wrong with two people in love? If a good boy loves a good girl, good. If a good boy loves another good boy, good. And if a good girl loves the goodness in good boys and good girls, then all you have is more goodness, and goodness has nothing to do with sexual orientation.
I know what my job is: I write the songs, I sing them, I play them on the piano.
I would really like to go back to school. I would love it now.
I've never been to the websites. It's a lot healthier for me to keep out of the conversations about me.
I'm not the Queen. I'm not a huge superstar; I don't get paparazzi around me.
I don't know if anybody wants to mix their politics with their entertainment.
I still don't know what Episcopalian means.
I wrote 'Criminal' in 45 minutes when everyone else went to lunch because I had to have a hit. I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me.
No, I've never wanted kids. But I do read about parenting a lot.
I was told so many times when I was a kid, 'I can't be friends with you, you're too intense, you're too sad all the time.' I really thought that when I made the first album that everyone would understand me, all the people who weren't my friends would become my friends.
If you want to see me cry, just come to a photo shoot.
There aren't many poster children for cool angst. Everybody thinks it's cool if you're the bad girl.
Because for whatever reason, even though I want to stay home all the time and be left alone, I want to tell the world who I am now.
I just tend to do things to myself that I don't realize I'm doing. Sometimes I bite my lip so that it splits and hurts, and yet I can't stop. And sometimes I'd play shows on the last run, I'd scratch my neck while I was singing, and I'd horrified to see these red streaks of blood after.
The way I feel about music is that there is no right and wrong. Only true and false.
Sometimes interviews are fun and good conversations, but stuff like photo shoots and appearances at places where you have to meet a lot of people - I was never really made for this kind of stuff.
The quick success was a bit strange to get used to.
I got into therapy in the fifth grade because I said in a sarcastic way that I was going to kill myself, and they didn't get it then. Nothing's changed.
I've gone through stages where I hate my body so much that I won't even wear shorts and a bra in my house because if I pass a mirror, that's the end of my day.
I had really bad obsessive-compulsive disorder. At its worst, I was compelled to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning and go out in the alley because I just knew that the paper-towel roll I threw in the recycling bin was uncomfortable, like it was lying the wrong way, and I would be down in the garbage.
I used to get a shiver if I thought about holding balloons, because I was scared of floating away.
Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice.
I don't go on lunch dates with friends. I hear about people having dinner parties, but I never do that. I'm not really human.
In a strange way, I'm way more comfortable onstage than anywhere else.
When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.
You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what's around you. You go crazy that way.
I also just accept that I might never want to write a song again.
If I have one success in my relationship history, it's with the people who listen to my music. I think that they'll be there with me forever, and I'll be there with them forever. And I'm totally satisfied with that.
What's really good is African drum music.
I don't think what I look like is relevant.
I don't have a big thing about leaving my mark or being historic.
I have a very steadfast tendency to parent myself, to monitor my development into the person I want to be. I've tried to keep the corruption minimal.
I never thought I'd be in a position where people would be talking about my sexuality and saying how good I look in underwear.
For me, the best times are always going to be the most intense, the ones with the highest highs and the lowest lows.
I think I'm better at live shows than I used to be because I'm way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I'll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don't know how to.
As a person who performs on stage, it's good to be emotionally open. If you mess with someone when they are in that state, it's like you're messing with an animal when it's eating.
I want to be like the patron saint of reality.
The age thing really bugs me. Do people have more of a right to not like what I say because I'm 19?
Rape is the most humiliating thing that can be done to you; it's the most vulnerable that you can be. But once I realized that, I became a stronger person and faced all my fears.
I walk my dog at dawn because I don't like people to be around.
I got all my work done to graduate in two months and then they were like, I'm sorry, you have to take driver's ed. I just kind of went, Oh, forget it.
Five years from now I'm probably going to look back on the things I'm doing and cringe.
