Quotes by Michelle Shocked

• 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.
• I'm too shy, really to be able to hang out with my heroes for too long.
• 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.
• 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.
• Music is too important to be left to professionals.
• Music is not a commodity, it's a resource.
• Make your own music. It can be done.
• I've been through some dark times but I've experienced joy too. Now that joy can't be suppressed.
• 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.
• I walked along that slippery slope where if you fail through lack of faith, you sell your soul to the devil.
• 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.
• I think the word soul has gotta come into it. Music that's created just for consuming lacks that soul, that swing, that feeling.
• I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.
• I accepted a change in my life. I didn't choose that change and those are the best changes to make.
• 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.
• 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.