Michelle Shocked Quotes

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.

Making music should not be left to the 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 walked along that slippery slope where if you fail through lack of faith, you sell your soul to the devil.

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

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

Vengeance and revenge are just two words for pain.

Music is too important to be left to professionals.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make your own music. It can be done.

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

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