MICHELLE SHOCKED

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.

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

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

Make your own music. It can be done.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.