Michelle Shocked

Music is too important to be left to professionals.

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 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.

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'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.

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

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

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.

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

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