Top 41 Quotes & Sayings by Michelle Shocked

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.

Music is too important to be left to professionals.

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

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

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.

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

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

Make your own music. It can be done.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

If I have something to apologize, I want to be the first one to step up and make that apology. I don't want anyone to broker it for me. I don't want anyone to take the hit for me. If I have anything to apologize for, I'm only human. I'm prone to making mistakes.

If I'm going to be held captive by social media, I'm going to use it against itself.

Vengeance and revenge are just two words for pain.

Mainstream media would convince you that there's commercial culture and that's all - but this other music is still here.

I was in a prayer meeting yesterday. You gotta appreciate how scared, how scares folks on that side of the equation are. From their vantage point -- I really shouldnt say their -- cause its mine too, we are nearly at the end of time and from our vantage point, were going to be I think maybe Chinese Water torture is going to be the means the method, once Prop 8 gets instated and once preachers are held at gunpoint and forced to marry the homosexuals, Im pretty sure that that will be the signal for Jesus to come on back.

I'm passionate about two things: Jesus and liberation.

The love that I pray every day is manifest through me. Not because I'm a loving person, but because the God that I serve loves everybody.

I regard myself as a true American musician, and I play every style that is my heritage.

When I grow up I want to be an old woman.

At one time I was a nihilistic punk with a mohican and a ring in my nose. I think in the course of time I'll find a middle ground, but I also carry that sense of responsibility. I'm in a position to defeat stereotypes.

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

I resent like hell that I was maybe eighteen before I ever heard the 'L' word. It would have made all the difference for me had I grown up knowing that the reason I didn't fit in was because they hadn't told me there were more categories to fit into.

Prayer is so incredibly powerful. It keeps you in perfect peace.

Everyone thinks young people are alienated from the system. But when you present them with a viable alternative, they will be the first to take it. And then watch out.

We've come a long way, we've come a long way and we never even left L.A.

Making music should not be left to the professionals.

I believe in the power of music. I believe in it absolutely. It's never failed me. Never.

Their lives ran in circles so small They thought they'd seen it all

What kind of religion is it that would encourage the parent to shelter the child from any outside influences and punish it by putting it out in a world you never had any way of learning about?

"What the hell'd you let them break your spirit for?" You know, their lives ran in circles so small. Ah, they thought they'd seen it all. And they could not make a place for a girl who'd seen the ocean.

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

I can't tell you where I'm going . . . but I can tell you where I come from.