Quote of the Day (Tori Amos, on Why ‘Being a Librarian is a Fantasy of Mine’)

 

“Being a librarian is a fantasy of mine. In my album Tales of a Librarian, I'm dressed in different imagined librarian costumes, and in the liner notes the tracks are organized by the Dewey Decimal System. My own little libraries don’t have a system, but I have dreams of one!”— Grammy-nominated American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, interviewed by Scott Heller for “By the Book: Tori Amos,” The New York Times Book Review, Mar. 16, 2025

The image accompanying this post, of Tori Amos performing in Helsinki, Finland, was taken June 9, 2015, by NeoMeesje.

Quote of the Day (Tori Amos, on the Muses and Aging)

“They can be quite ruthless, so I’m not going to say to you that it’s an easy collaboration, because it isn’t. It’s not as if I snap my fingers and greatness comes. A lot of my interpretation of what I’m hearing, sometimes I’m throwing 60, 70 percent of it away, because the magic isn’t there. It’s about having endurance. That’s important. There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine. Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine we can become zombie-like and shut down. It’s about discipline. You have to push yourself.”—Singer-songwriter Tori Amos, on whether the muses visit her as frequently as they did 20 and 30 years ago, quoted by Joan Anderman, “The Creative Midlife: Tori Amos Still Wrestles With Her Muses,” The New York Times, December 4, 2012

(Photo of Tori Amos in concert as part of her American Doll Posse tour, July 13, 2007).