Michelle Shocked Quotes (23 Quotes)

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.

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

Make your own music. It can be 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.

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

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

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 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 accepted a change in my life. I didn't choose that change and those are the best changes to make.

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.

There is no one like him alive today, ... He was a vast treasure trove and storehouse of musical and cultural knowledge and the richness that he has brought into all of our lives is immeasurable. He was a generous spirit, overlooking faults in order to see the common humanity that we all share and this is the quality that I will miss the most. For a man who has seen some of the most repulsive and ugly aspects of human nature to transform that knowledge into the beauty and grace that he does is an uplift and hope for citizens of the world.

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.

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.

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

Music is too important to be left to professionals.

Some women can be sweet because they don't know how else to move through the world. I'm sweet because I can afford to be.

Punk is just as much a form of folk music as anything is

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.

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.

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

The secret of a long life is knowing when it's time to go.

I've been through some dark times but I've experienced joy too. Now that joy can't be suppressed.