Tori's thoughts on pianos and being a musician...

"I've been a musician before I was a human."

"Since I was a little girl, I've been a musician first. I wasn't just an extension of the piano; I was the piano. That's how people looked at me." -- Sunday New York Times, JAN 14, 1996

"I remember (my first memory of piano) as clear as day. This huge black upright. It had one of those winding stools on it that could wind down low or wind up really high, and i would wind it down to get on it and then I would ask my brother to wind it up so I could reach the keys. He would always wind it up for me." -- All These Years Biography, pg.7

"You see, I'm not music theory smart. To me, it's an internal, instinctive thing. It's like, I don't care if this is making mathematical sense, I am not creaming. If I'm really honest, looking back, I wanted my father to be proud of me. But I couldn't do it in that way, because it has to be in your soul to be a great concert pianist."

In a 1985 letter home to her parents she reveals, "I have to accept that the girl and her piano are dead. That time in history is over." -- All These Years Biography, pg.33

After her Y Kant Tori Read failure, Amos says she "got down and sucked the big B�se," rediscovering her self-belief in new, piano-based material that was to become Little Earthquakes.

"There are a lot of poets and groove people, but there's not much music out there. My own devotion is to music. Everyone told me this me-and-my-piano thing was never going to work." -- Newsweek, Feb.19, 1996

"I've never felt anything that moves me as much as my piano. I'm an emotional player. I don't really like people. I prefer my piano to people. It's totally reliable and it's alive. I can hear what it's saying. For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they're dykes, and they're always good fun."

"Playing is the only place where I've felt in touch with my sexuality, my spirituality and my emotions, and never, ever, ever anywhere else. So my life is a bit tricky because when I'm not playing, I'm just trying to walk down the street." -- Women, Sex & Rock 'n' Roll

"I take that stage and that piano and demon girls come out." -- All These Years Biography, pg.29

"It's a passionate instrument...a sensual instrument...and um, you can hide men in it..."

"You're not even thinking anymore (when performing), you just free your mind and express. There's nothing calculated. I don't play the piano, the piano plays me."

"I would have been a history teacher if I wouldn't have been a suet specialist, if I didn't know the piano." -- All These Years Biography, pg.46

"If I couldn't play, I've no idea what kind of bitter person I would've become. Because that's where I was able to express some kind of freedom without guilt. Guilt for passion." -- Rolling Stone, June 30, 1994

"I know when I'm playing passionately, and it's primitive and it's as old as time. But I know when I look at myself and I'm in anguish, sexualizing myself. At that point I was very cut off - I only knew how to express myself sexually through my instrument. But it left me as soon as I got offstage. So I searched for it and tried to find it in other people."

"The way I play is a bit tortuous but, at the same time, it's the only way I know how to play. It would be hard for me to hit those notes with that power and play with accuracy unless I supported myself physically the way I do."

"I don't feel a part of any kind of sisterhood. Again, it's the most disappointing thing where I get criticized by women more than men on how I play the piano. They find it offensive. I'm just going, well, this is how I choose to express myself, so if you're truly a strong, independent woman, then how could you possibly find me being a strong, independent woman offensive?"

"The reason I love to play B�sendorfers is because I think their whole manufacturing process is trying to keep them as unmechanical, as unfactorized as possible, so that the soul of everybody who touches one or works with it is in there." -- Piano and Keyboard, May/June 1993

"A piano is alive because of all the feeling the men working on it put into it." -- Piano & Keyboard, May/June 1996

"Pianos are like people; every piano has a completely different personality." -- Keyboard review, Feb 1992

Tori works with two B�sendorfers, "the one that I own and the one that I tour with. The B�sey I own is very much a recording instrument, she's not into touring. She's eight years old now. She was in a church in New York City for a while where she got battered and abused, and she got shoved around every club in the city before she was in the church, so she just got the shit beat out of her in New York, and i felt like she and I understood each other, so, she had to be rebuilt kind of, and I just take really good care of her. She gathers her energy and then we put it into the record. The piano I'm touring with is a year old, so she's feisty and wants to see the world and check out boys multi-culturally. She was rotting in this showroom in London. So she's happy to be on the road with me, meeting all these cute dudes." -- All These Years Biography, pg.97

"I felt so intertwined with it that I had no identity except the girl at the piano, and I didn't respect it anymore, mainly because I wanted this piano to make me worth something. I wanted it to bring me friends and recognition...I was really using it the way you would your last name or who your father was - or whatever you use to feel powerful." -- Piano & Keyboard, May/June 1993

"After all the...you know, the fiery red head behaviour, drawing my lines, making my threats... i was lying there, feeling incredibly weak. Feeling like there are not enough sold-out shows, like it doesn't matter that every American show is sold out, because I'm only alive when I'm on stage with a piano. The rest of the time I'm just in this shell." -- Cornflake Girl Biography

"I really was getting a bit bored with the piano; compositionally. I just needed a new taste, kind of like another spice, so I got into the red pepper, cayenne pepper. Cayenne pepper in orange juice, cayenne pepper in spaghetti, cayenne pepper in pudding, and this is what the harpsichord has been." -- Spin, Mar96

"Playing it -- the harpsichord more like a percussive instrument. I got into my trash harpsichord. When I look at it, I just see it go to me, "Wear your high-heeled red shoes and give me some ass, girl." -- Spin, Mar96

"I've done that (the girl writhing away on the piano), I mean, I have wrung that one dry!" -- Spin, May 1998

"I wanted to have a marriage with the instruments in a way that I never really have. I know I can sit down a the piano and boogie to the left and boogie to the right, but could I hold my own with real players?" -- Rolling Stone, May 1998

"The piano was always at the centre, but she's [the piano's] not down in the same way. She's more integrated. It's more like a passing of the baton to other instruments, although she still shines at times."

"I've never played the guitar, except throwing it against the wall cause it was pissed off I couldn't play it." -- Yahoo Chat, April 13, 1998

I guess you go too far, when pianos try to be guitars. -- Northern Lad