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• This world is bullshit. And you shouldn't model your life — wait a second — you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself. Go with yourself.
  • Acceptance speech, 1997 MTV Video Music Awards

• It was because of this guy I had gone out with and had been really, really close with. I really loved him. I felt that he was my best friend. But he was a teenaged guy, and they don't think a lot of times. He mistreated me and then he came back. I couldn't even be friends with him for awhile. I cared about him, but it was just a situation where he kept trying to be friends with me, but I knew that he just wanted to be friends with me so he could have the option of making a move on me whenever he wanted to. And because I was so infatuated with him, and even in love with him, I was always available for that. It made me feel weak every time I would fall for that. And I would look forward to him making a move on me, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that he was playing with me. And after awhile, I didn't even care anymore because I wanted him so much.
  • On Shadowboxer from Tidal, Nuvo [1997]

• Interviewer: I read a post on the Internet from a young girl who had been victimized by someone and her position was like, "I can talk about this now because Fiona Apple can talk about what happened to her." Do you look at yourself as a role model for women and girls who've had this experience?
  Fiona: That's the only reason I ever brought the whole rape thing up. It's a terrible thing, but it happens to so many people. I mean, 80 percent of the people I've told have said right back to me, "That happened to me too." It's so common, and so ridiculous that it's a hard thing to talk about. It angers me so much because something like that happens to you and you carry it around for the rest of your life. No matter how much therapy you go through, no matter how much healing you go through, it's part of you. I just feel that it's such a tragedy that so many people have to bear the extra burden of having to keep it secret from everyone else. As if it's too icky a subject to burden other people with and everyone's going to think you're a victim forever. Then you've labeled yourself a victim, and you've been taken advantage of, and you're ruined, and you're soiled, and you're not pure, you know.

  If I'm in a position where people are looking up to me in any way, then it's absolutely my responsibility to be open and honest about this, because if I'm not, what does that say to people? It doesn't change a person -- well, it does change a person but it doesn't take anything away from you. It can only strengthen you. It has made me so angry in the past. Like I wanted to say it to somebody. I really wanted somebody to connect with, somebody to understand me, somebody to comfort me. But I felt like I couldn't say anything about because it was taboo to talk about.

• Nuvo [1997]

• My problem was that I felt ashamed of feeling sad or angry. Now, I don't hide my vulnerability in my lyrics. There's no way I was going to get raped and not get something out of it. I learned about power and hope and forgiveness. I like who I am now and I wouldn't be who I am if that hadn't happened.
  • ELLE [1996]

Lyrics

• What I need is a good defense
  'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
  And I need to be redeemed
  To the one I've sinned against
  Because he's all I ever knew of love.
  • Criminal, Tidal (1996)

• When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
  What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
  And he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring
  There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might
  So when you go solo you hold your own hand
  And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
  And if you know where you stand then you know where to land
  And if you fall it won’t matter cuz you’ll know that you’re right.
  • When the Pawn, When the Pawn… (1999)

• My derring-do allows me to dance the rigadoon around you
  but by the time I'm through I lose my desideratum.
  • To Your Love, When the Pawn…

• Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love.
  • Paper Bag, When the Pawn…

• Do I wanna do right, of course
  but do I really wanna feel I’m forced
  to answer you, hell no.
  I’ve acquired quite a taste for a well-made mistake,
  I wanna make a mistake.
  • A Mistake, When the Pawn…

• If you keep on killing, you could get me to settle and as soon as I settle, I bet I’ll be able to move on.
  • The Way Things Are, When the Pawn…

• And I will pretend
  That I don't know of your sins
  Until you are ready to confess
  But all the time, all the time, I'll know
  And you can use my skin
  To bury secrets in.
  • I Know, When the Pawn…

• I certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes,
  And I certainly haven't been spreading myself around
  I still only travel by foot, and by foot it's a slow climb
  But I'm good at being uncomfortable,
  So I can't stop changing all the time
  • Extraordinary Machine, Extraordinary Machine (2005)

• If you don't have a date
  Celebrate
  Go out and sit on the lawn
  And do nothing
  'Cause it's just what you must do
  Nobody does it anymore
  • Waltz (Better Than Fine), Extraordinary Machine

About Fiona Apple

• Well, you ain't Fiona Apple. And if you ain't Fiona Apple, I don't give a rat's ass.
  • Officer Barbrady, after Barbra Streisand asks him if he knew who she is
  • South Park, "Mecha-Streisand" [1.12]

• And then I went over to the concession stand to get some tea and I ran into Fiona Apple, and I was like, "Who do you think you are, Fiona Snapple?"
  • Cinder Calhoun (Ana Gasteyer, Saturday Night Live, unidentified episode)

• This world is bullshit. And just because I appear in music video wherein I am in my underwear, and make young women feel not good enough so that they become anorxeic; and okay, maybe because of that I became popular more quickly than other singers who are, I don't know, maybe more talented or better songwriters. That doesn't matter because, and ... um ... my boyfriend is a magician, and he can pull a quarter out of your ear and say things like 'We have not met before have we?' Go with yourself.
  • Janeane Garofalo, spoofing Apple's infamous MTV Awards speech