text:
Abortion

 is the ending of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus.

A

 * Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.
 * Edward Abbey, One Life at a Time, Please (1988).

 * Love, spite of honour’s dictates, gave thee breath; Honour, in spite of love, pronounced thy death.
 * Anonymous, "Epitaph on a Child Killed by Procured Abortion" (1740), reported in The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse (1984), p. 335

 * All the articles on this subject that I have read have been from men. They denounce women as alone guilty, and never include man in any plans for the remedy... Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed [abortion]. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!
 * Anonymous essay signed "A" in The Revolution, August 8, 1869. Wrongly attributed to Susan B. Anthony.

 * Much as I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder, earnestly as I desire its suppression, I cannot believe ... that such a law [against abortion] would have the desired effect. It seems to be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains. We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it...It is practiced by those whose inmost souls revolt from the dreadful deed.
 * Anonymous essay signed "A" in The Revolution, August 8, 1869. Wrongly attributed to Susan B. Anthony.

 * I guess I never realized I would find [performing abortions] as unpleasant as I do. I really don't enjoy it at all. It's not a rewarding thing to do ... [patients] look at you as an evil person who is deliberately putting them through a painful procedure ... it's their whole attitude that bothers me. I feel like a simple thank you is in order, instead of 'Why are you doing this to me?'
 * Anonymous abortion doctor, quoted by Jack Hitt in "Who Will Do Abortions Here?", New York Times Magazine, January 18, 1998.

 * I have the utmost respect for life; I appreciate that life starts early in the womb, but I also believe that I am ending it for good reasons.
 * Anonymous Boston abortion doctor, "Confessions of an Abortion Doctor," Cheryl Alkon, Boston Magazine, December 2004.

 * I don't approve, but it doesn't matter if I don't approve. I'm doing my job, I'm doing what I am trained to do.
 * Anonymous abortion doctor, The Abortionist Mary Ellen Mark, GQ Magazine, Feb 1994.

 * Murder, red-handed murder, is so popular in Chicago today that you cannot go on the principal streets without seeing the signs hanging out by the dozens of scoundrels in the shape of men who stand ready to commit the murder of an unborn innocent for $5 and upward.
 * Anonymous speaker, from the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Convention of the American Association of Spiritualists, 1873.

 * She will rue the day she forces nature.
 * Susan B. Anthony, women's suffrage movement leader, writing in her diary on March 7, 1876, when her sister-in-law was bedridden after an abortion that did not go well.

 * [T]he line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive.
 * Aristotle, Politics (c. 325 BC), bk. 7, ch. 6, sec. 1335b, as translated by H. Rackham

B

 * Men tend to take abortion lightly; they regard it as one of the numerous hazards imposed on women by malignant nature, but fail to realise fully the values involved. The woman who has recourse to abortion is disowning feminine values, her values, and at the same time is in most radical fashion running counter to the ethics established by men. Her whole moral universe is being disrupted....[H]ow could they fail to feel an inner mistrust of the presumptuous principles that men publicly proclaim and secretly disregard? They learn to believe no longer in what men say when they exalt woman or when they exalt man; the one thing they are sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there.
 * Simone de Beauvoir, feminist leader and advocate of legalized abortion, in The Second Sex, 1952.

 * Squats on a toad-stool under a tree A bodiless childfull of life in the gloom, Crying with frog voice, “What shall I be? Poor unborn ghost, for my mother killed me  Scarcely alive in her wicked womb.”
 * Thomas Lovell Beddoes, "Song by Isbrand", in Death's Jest-Book (1850), III, iii

 * Abortion, it can be said, is contraception practised late. So the ethical rules that support contraception also support the abortion of a non-viable fetus, that is one not yet capable of living indefinitely outside the mother's body. Abortion is always sad, and depressing for the aborting woman. It negates her nature, and for that we should have pity. Yet it is her choice.
 * Francis Bennion, The Sex Code (1991)

 * For today, the women of this Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows.
 * Harry Blackmun, U.S. Supreme Court, in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989).

 * When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society. So when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.
 * Mattie Brinkerhoff, women's suffrage movement leader, in The Revolution (September 2, 1869)..

C

 * Abortion does not seem the kind of moral issue which is just 'solved' once and for all; it can only be coped with.
 * Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (1972)

 * Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't wanna fuck in the first place? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach military age. Then they think you're just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life... These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it? They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.
 * George Carlin, Back in Town (1996).

 * Here's another question I have. How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelet? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we're better than chickens... See, nobody can do it! You know why? 'Cause chickens are decent people. You don't see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don't see a chicken strapping some guy to a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When's the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn't happen... 'cause chickens are decent people.
 * George Carlin, Back in Town (1996).

 * Catholics and other Christians are against abortions and they're against homosexuals. Well who has less abortions than homosexuals? Leave these fucking people alone for Christ's sake! Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion! And the Catholics and the Christians are just tossing them aside... You'd think they'd make natural allies.
 * George Carlin, Back in Town (1996).

 * When we look to the unborn child, the real issue is not when life begins, but when love begins.
 * Robert Casey, as quoted or paraphrased by George W. Bush, "Remarks on Signing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act" (November 5, 2003), Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, vol. 39, no. 45 (November 10, 2003), pp. 1540–1

 * The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.
 * Clyde Chambliss, when asked why Alabama's 2019 abortion bill doesn't bestow personhood on zygotes in fertility clinics, as quoted by Samantha Bee, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (May 15, 2019); reported in Dream McClinton, "Samantha Bee: Alabama lawmakers 'wouldn't know a vulva if it bit them'", The Guardian, (16 May, 2019).

 * If you haven't seen what abortion does, then you will never understand what abortion actually is.
 * Clenard Howard Childress, Jr., Life Education And Resource Network.

 * You're not going to get the answers from holy texts. You're not going to the answers from biologists. These are matters of human concern. There are conflicting values and taken in isolation each of these values is quite legitimate. Choice is legitimate, preserving life is legitimate.
 * Noam Chomsky, linguist and political writer, from interview in documentary film Lake of Fire.

D

 * Everybody is right when it comes to the issue of abortion.
 * Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, from interview in documentary film Lake of Fire.

E

 * [Abortion opponents] love little babies, as long as they're in somebody else's uterus.
 * Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General, Redbook Magazine (August, 1994).

G

 * The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.
 * Germaine Greer, feminist author and advocate of legal abortion, essay Abortion, The Sunday Times, 21 May 1972.

 * It is typical of the contradictions that break women's hearts that when they avail themselves of their fragile right to abortion they often, even usually, went with grief and humiliation to carry out a painful duty that was presented to them as a privilege. Abortion is the latest in a long line of non-choices that begin at the very beginning with the time and the place and the manner of lovemaking.
 * Germaine Greer, quoted in The New Republic (October 5, 1992).

 * The goal was ‘every child a wanted child’; it should also have been ‘every abortion a wanted abortion’, but the two sides of the phony debate were never to meet.
 * Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman(1999).

H

 * If a fertilized egg is fully human, then all terminations of pregnancy at any stage and for any reason are to be regarded as murder. This offends against the natural or instinctive feeling in favor of the pregnant woman and the occupant of her womb, because it blurs the distinction between an embryonic group of cells and a human with a central nervous system. The distinction between abortions in the first and third trimesters, a distinction which speaks both to our ability to avoid casuistry and to our inborn wish to have a say in our own fates, is therefore null and void in Catholic teaching.
 * Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice (2012)

J

 * There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of [a] higher order than the right to life ... that was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside your right to be concerned.
 * Jesse Jackson, U.S. civil rights activist, now in favor of legal abortion, in National Right to Life News, (January, 1977).

 * The polls find that most of us think we have made up our minds about abortion. Another way of reading the polls is that the silent minority wishes the noisy majority would shut up and leave their consciences alone. But they don't shut up. They don't let go. And that is a good thing. Abortion is an issue of death and of life. And to find your true feelings about it means you have to confront your own morality and mortality. That is not an easy or comforting thing to do. That is why throughout history the majority's first, most persistent answer to moral challenge has been, 'Shut up.' That is why the pages of history are punctuated with martyrs. Finally, however, a time comes to listen. But, for abortion that time won't come until those most concerned - on both sides - stop to listen to what the other has to say. It they would listen they would realize that each side - pro-abortion and anti-abortion is pro-life. The anti-abortion forces are so obsessed with the question of birth that they ignore another question: What happens after the baby gets here? The fight long and desperately to save the fetus but are not nearly so worried about the challenge to save the children. The pro-abortion forces say that the social conditions awaiting so many of the unborn are not good enough to live in. It is a legitimate concern, but in finding an answer in abortion they are overstepping their rights. In denying life because social conditions, they are forcing their cynicism on others.
 * Jesse Jackson, Must Attack Conditions Leading to Abortion, January 30, 1978, The Evening News, Editorial Page, John J. Prizzia Jr., publisher, Newburgh, N.Y., vol. 17, no. 349, p. 6A.

 * I wanted to meet my biological mother mostly to see if she was okay and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have me.
 * Steve Jobs, quoted in, Steve Jobs (2013), Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 1451648545 ISBN 9781451648546p. 254.

 * The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.
 * Pope John Paul II, The Observer, (June 9, 1991).

 * It is not possible to speak of the right to choose when a clear moral evil is involved, when what is at stake is the commandment, Do not kill!
 * Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994), The Defence of Every Life.

 * Abortion is part of the power patriarchy holds over women. Abortion is an issue of hegemony and imperialism: men to other men are explorers; to men, women are the moon, enigmatic frontier and flow, "virgin"/empty land to be owned and controlled and into which flags can be rammed. Men have made women their territory, abortion theirs to control, mystify, and sell back to women; abortion is not simply a medical procedure, it is a medicalized procedure, a procedure medicalized, like childbirth and Pap tests, and for the same reasons—control and profit.
 * Linnea Johnson, "Something Real: Jane and Me. Memories and Exhortations of a Feminist Ex-Abortionist". CWLU Herstory Project. Archived from the original on July 25, 2011. Retrieved May 23, 2010.

K

 * Who cares if it's legal? I don't care if it's legal. Slavery was legal once too, and not just in America, but just about every other country in the world. The powerful have always legalized their subjugation of the less powerful.
 * John Kass, "Evil with salad and a nice red" (19 July 2015), Chicago Tribune, Illinois

 * At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. ... [P]eople have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. ... We conclude the line should be drawn at viability, so that, before that time, the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. ...[T]here is no line other than viability which is more workable. To be sure, as we have said, there may be some medical developments that affect the precise point of viability, but this is an imprecision within tolerable limits. ... A husband has no enforceable right to require a wife to advise him before she exercises her personal choices.
 * Anthony Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court, speaking for the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) (joint opinion coauthored with Justices Souter and O'Connor).

 * The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.
 * Anthony Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court, dissenting in Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U. S. 914 (2000) (detailing what he deemed a constitutionally protected alternative to partial-birth abortion).

 * If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
 * Florynce Kennedy, in Ms. (March 1973), as quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 7th ed. However, the saying is also attributed to Gloria Steinem: see Emma Brockes, "Gloria Steinem: 'If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament'", The Guardian (October 17, 2015), Online

 * Babies are not like bad teeth to be jerked out just because they cause suffering. An unborn baby is a baby nevertheless.
 * Jill Knight,  (22 June 1966), quoted by Keith Hindell, Abortion Law Reformed (1971), p. 163

L

 * As long as the Catholic Church, or any faith, continues to block legislation allowing individual conscience and free choice in abortion, the core of our democratic system is crippled. The right to abortion is the foundation of Society's long struggle to guarantee that every child comes into this world wanted, loved, and cared for. The right to abortion, along with all birth-control measures, must establish the Century of the Wanted Child.
 * Lawrence Lader, Abortion (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966), p. 165.

 * We lived our dreams and challenged fate In tears she told me she was late Then Sally let his pigeons out to fly She left one night with just a nod Was lost in some back alley job I close my eyes and Sally's pigeons fly.
 * Cyndi Lauper, "Sally's Pigeons" (1993)

 * The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces: what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities.
 * Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (1997).

M

 * The cruel irony is that abortion has been presented as something that would set a woman free. This brings to mind the gypsy in Verdi's opera . Outraged by the count's cruel injustice, she stole his infant son and, in a crazed act of vengeance, flung him into the fire. Or so she thought. For, in turning around, she discovered the count's son lay safe on the ground behind her; it was her own son she had thrown into the flames. Abortion can present itself as glittering liberty, a defiant way to cast off the shackles of injustice. That illusion lasts only until you realize who it was that you threw into the flames.
 * Frederica Matthewes-Green, "Wanted: A New Pro-life Strategy", Christianity Today (January 12, 1998).

 * When we question whether someone is a person, it is because we want to kill him. We do this with our enemies in wartime, or with anyone we would like to enslave or exploit. Before we can feel comfortable treating others this way, we have to expel them from the human community.
 * Frederica Matthewes-Green, "Personhood of the Unborn", on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, (January 21, 1998).

O

 * Quae prima instituit teneros convellere fetus, Militia fuerat digna perire sua.
 * She who first plucked forth the tender life deserved to die in the warfare she began.
 * Ovid, Amores, II, xiv, 1–6 (tr. Grant Showerman)

P

 * It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.
 * Dorothy Parker, on her abortion, parodying "don't put all your eggs in one basket". Quoted in J. Keats, You Might as Well Live (1970)

R

 * One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.
 * Ayn Rand, "A Last Survey — Part I", The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. IV, No. 2, 1975.

 * We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life.
 * Ronald Reagan, "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation", Human Life Review, Spring 1984.

 * If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn."
 * Ronald Reagan, "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation", Human Life Review, Spring 1984.

 * The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being.
 * Ronald Reagan, "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation", Human Life Review, Spring 1984.

 * Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value.
 * Ronald Reagan, "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation", Human Life Review, Spring 1984.

 * As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life ethic and the 'quality of life' ethic. I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it will give in the future.
 * Ronald Reagan, "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation", Human Life Review, Spring 1984.

 * I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.
 * Ronald Reagan, presidential campaign debate, 21 September, 1980. Quoted in The New York Times, September 22, 1980.

 * Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language -- this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable... In a society where women entered sexual intercourse willingly, where adequate contraception was a genuine social priority, there would be no 'abortion issue'... Abortion is violence... It is the offspring, and will continue to be the accuser of a more pervasive and prevalent violence, the violence of rapism.
 * Adrienne Rich, feminist poet and author and advocate of legal abortion, in Of Woman Born, 1976.

 * Abortion, it's beautiful, it's beautiful abortion is legal. I love going to an abortion rally to pick up women, 'cause you know they are fucking... When a woman gets pregnant, it's a choice between the woman and her girlfriends. One girlfriend goes, 'Child, you should have that baby — that man got some good hair.' And the other girlfriend says, 'Child, why we even talking about this — ain't we supposed to go to Cancun next week? Get rid of that baby!' [That] is how life is decided in America.
 * Chris Rock, comedian, in his stand-up comedy routine, February 2005.

 * [A] physician of wealth and high standing had seduced a girl and then induced her to commit abortion—I rather lost my temper, and wrote to the individuals who had asked for the pardon, saying that I extremely regretted that it was not in my power to increase the sentence.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, 305 (1913).

 * Still I think there's too much fuss about abortion. This is done by men. Men who don't give a fuck about their own kids, those who already have arms and legs. And go to grade one. They should be bought a backpack or trainers and taught drawing. [...] They've got neither dough nor time for their own kids, but about yours and mine whose arms still haven’t grown... Okay. Had I given them a chance, they would've had arms and legs. You get it. Where was I? Those masters don't even know they have kids, but they know everything about abortions. They write science papers, give lectures, hand flyers, present diapositives, show slowmotion small bodies being crunched. Jerks have eyes full of love for late and future abortions. They want to unite abortions of the world. Raise them to their feet! In your dreams!
 * Vedrana Rudan in: Uho, grlo, nož (Ear, Throat, Knife), 2002. ISBN 978-86-521-2555-5. p. 116 (Translated from Croatian)

S

 * And since a man can't make one He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one.
 * Tupac Shakur, "Keep Ya Head Up" (1993)

 * When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.
 * Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women's suffrage movement leader, in a letter to Julia Ward Howe recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library (October 16, 1873). See also: Dannenfelser, Marjorie (4 November 2015). "The Suffragettes Would Not Agree With Feminists Today on Abortion". Time. Archived from the original on 6 November 2015. Retrieved 4 November 2015.

T

 * ...the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself... because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
 * Mother Teresa, in her Nobel Lecture given upon receiving the Peace Prize (December 11, 1979).

 * It is a very great poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
 * Mother Teresa, quoted in the U.S. , vol. 129 (June 27, 1983), p. 17319

U

 * Partus antequam edatur, mulieris portio vel viscerum est.
 * The child is a part of the woman, or of her entrails, before it is born.
 * Ulpian, Digesta, XXV, iv, 1, 1 (tr. S. P. Scott)

V

 * Even if you are pro-choice, no one likes to see a dead fetus.
 * Vilma Valdez, Education Director Planned Parenthood of Greater Miami, The Miami Herald (October 24, 1992).

W

 * In some cases abortion is justified.
 * Henry Wade, Dallas County, Texas, district attorney, commenting in 1997 about the landmark U.S. Supreme Court abortion case Roe v. Wade, in which he was the defendant.

 * Should there be competing articles, so that you would have the Catholic article on abortion, the evangelical Christian version, and the Planned Parenthood version
 * Jimmy Wales Jimmy Wales: “Wikipedia is from a different era”" (January 14, 2021)

 * George W. Bush, go to hell! And while you're at it, we want you to take Ashcroft with you. And don't forget Rumsfeld. And please carry along Condi Rice... I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion.
 * Maxine Waters, member of US Congress, at the televised pro-choice March For Women's Lives, (April 25, 2004).

 * Women... sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection... either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.
 * Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).

Z

 * It's a nasty, dirty, yucky thing and I always come home angry... I've become very good at it. I've become one hell of an abortionist. But it's not something I tell my kids about... Have you ever seen one? ... I don't care what anyone say, it is not a tonsillectomy, not just any old medical procedure. It's terminating a potential human life.
 * David Zbaraz, abortion doctor, "Abortionist; Doctor Joins Suit for Right to Do Operation He Hates", Washington Post, (March 3, 1980).

In fiction

 * Michael Corleone: I know you blame me for losing the baby. Yes, I know what that meant to you. I'll make it up to you, Kay. I swear I'll make it up to you. I'm gonna change. I'll change. I've learned that I have the strength to change. And you'll forget about this miscarriage. And we'll have another child. And we'll go on, you and I. We'll go on.
 * Kay Adams-Corleone: Oh, Michael. Michael, you are blind. It wasn't a miscarriage. It was an abortion. An abortion, Michael! Just like our marriage is an abortion, something that's unholy and evil. I didn't want your son, Michael! I wouldn't bring another one of you sons into this world! It was an abortion, Michael! It was a son, Michael! A son! And I had it killed because this must all end!
 * Michael Corleone and Kay Adams-Corleone as interpreted by Al Pacino and Diane Keaton in The Godfather Part II, (1974); screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo

title: Abortion


text:
Tori Amos

Myra Ellen "Tori" Amos (born 22 August 1963) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, and composer.

Quotes

 * I have been surprised, excited and pleasantly shocked by these comics that are extensions of the songs that I have loved and therefore welcome these amazing stories of pictures and words because they are uncompromisingly inspiring. It shows you thought is a powerful, formidable essence and can have a breathtaking domino effect.
 * On Comic Book Tattoo, http://www.toriamos.com/main_comic.asp
 * That is some funky-fresh, pop lockin' shit.
 * MTV Music Awards, in response to a dance done by Beck; spoken in an unenthusiastic monotone while reading from writing on her hand, and clearly fed to her by writers.

 * If I saw someone destroy a piano I'd fuckin' kill 'em. Wouldn't think twice. [It's] Just defending your best friend!
 * French television interview, 1992

 * This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It's no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don't throw away your cotton zippy jacket.
 * From her book Piece by Piece.

 * ...the most influential journeys I have had have been with Ayahuasca, the vine from the Amazon, the combination of that and mushrooms. They give me the trots and such! It's very much a medicine woman, medicine man's journey drug, where you go inside. It's not a social thing. It's an internal experience. I experiment with things that are usually an internal experience, because that's just what excites me. And yes, it does sometimes give me visions. But my intention when I am doing it is very different than recreational. I don't do it recreationally. I do it to go do inner work, and I'm very clear before I do it what I'm searching for. That way, there's no abuse suffered and I don't rely on it. It's just one more tool that I use sometimes.
 * Interview, 9/11/94, for Internet by Michael Pearce

 * Yeah, there was a period in the late '80s where I was working with different shaman. Myself and a friend, Beene, would take ayahuasca - but it wouldn't be in the liquid form, it would be a freeze-dried pill - and mushrooms. Some of those trips were eighteen hours long and I'll never forget, once I ended up sitting by the bush trying to ask the flowers why they didn't like me. It's like, Why can't I be your friend? I was crawling out of my skin at that time. In my twenties I was really... I was just losing my mind.
 * Q - May 1998.

 * Men have periods, too... they just don´t bleed.
 * Tori Amos

 * I love my Saab.
 * toriamos.com.

 * I got a Saab Convertible.
 * Interview, Bang Magazine, December 2003.

 * And I started to think about this story that was taking over my car at that moment. "Jamaica Inn" walked into my Saab and she said, "You might not like my story because i'm not gonna tell you how it ends yet, and you need to travel it with me.
 * The Beekeeper DVD

 * And my Saab is so great I'm gonna marry it.
 * Hello Magazine Interview 2005

 * Dark Energy. It can be found in the observable Universe. Found in ratios of 75% more than any other substance. Dark Energy. It can be found in religious extremists, in cheerleaders. To come to the conclusion that Dark signifies mean and malevolent would define 75% of the Universe as an evil force. Alternatively, to think that some cheerleaders don't have razors in their snatch is to be foolishly unarmed.
 * American Doll Posse, biography by Pip

 * "Beck's bass player (Justin Meldal-Johnsen) suggested I do a cover of Slayer's 'Raining Blood," she says applying strawberry lip balm with her pinkie. "I was reading about what was going on in Afghanistan--the way women were being oppressed, the destruction of religious statues. And when i heard that song, i just imagined a huge juicy vagina coming out of the sky, raining blood over all those racist, misogynist fuckers."
 * Interview in Spin Magazine, 2001

The Kate Bush Story (2014)

 * Quotes of Gaiman from the BBC documentary The Kate Bush Story (2014)

 * Babooshka's just one of those song's you just can't get out of your head, can you? You know, how she just takes a word, and you start seeing images and pictures. To a word that maybe you haven't used … it's "Babooshka" and she's turned that into an emotion, that's just how she's able to use a combination of a word and a combination of a melody and the rhythm of that, and it creates a new language.

 * I just remember pulling aside, I was driving, and I heard it on the radio, in the states — and she didn't really get played a lot in the states, until that song — that really got played — a lot. I remember, I had to pull over, and listen to it, because I'd never heard anything like it.
 * On "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)".

 * The intention is to tell a story, to create a sonic world for us, a sonic painting, for us to walk into, without having to see her. She's transcending that. She's choosing to transcend that. And that's a very powerful thing to do.

Songs

 * And I rode along side Till you lost me there In the open road And I rode along side Till the honey spread Itself so thin For me to break your bread For me to take your word I had to steal it.
 * "A Sorta Fairytale".

 * You could taste heaven perfectly.
 * "A Sorta Fairytale".

 * An angel's face is tricky to wear constantly.
 * "Purple People (Christmas in Space)".

 * Just what God needs: one more victim. Why do we crucify ourselves?
 * "Crucify".

 * Got enough guilt to start my own religion.
 * "Crucify".

 * I've got a cat named Easter; he says, 'Will you ever learn? You're just an empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird.'
 * "Crucify".

 * It was me And a gun And a man On my back But I haven't seen Barbados so I must get out of this
 * "Me and a Gun"

 * I found the secret to life; I'm okay when everything is not okay
 * "Upside Down".

 * God, sometimes you just don't come through. Do you need a woman to look after you?
 * "God".

 * So if I die today, I'll be the happy phantom, And I'll go chasing the nuns out in the yard, ...And the atrocities of school I can forgive: The happy phantom has no right to bitch.
 * "Happy Phantom".

 * Look, I'm standing naked before you; Don't you want more than my sex? I can scream as loud as your last one, But I can't claim innocence.
 * "Leather".

 * So you can make me cum; that doesn't make you Jesus.
 * "Precious Things".

 * So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. What's so amazing about really deep thoughts? Boy, you'd best pray that I bleed real soon -- How's that thought for you?
 * "Silent All These Years".

 * Years go by Will I still be waiting For somebody else to understand Years go by If I'm stripped of my beauty And the orange clouds Raining in head Years go by Will I choke on my tears Till finally there is nothing left One more casualty You know we're too easy Easy Easy
 * "Silent All These Years".

 * I think there are pieces of me you've never seen.
 * "Tear In Your Hand".

 * I can't believe that I would keep, keep you from flying And I would cry a thousand more if that's what it takes to sail you home.
 * "1000 Oceans".

 * If you know me so well, then tell me which hand I use.
 * "Yes, Anastasia".

 * A man bites into a dry peach and says "This peach is not good;" the peach replies "It is not my fault that you don't know the proper use for a dry peach."
 * A quote from the special inclusions in the sheet music book for her album Under the Pink.

 * Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.
 * "Little Earthquakes".

 * Nothing's gonna stop me from floating.
 * "Father Lucifer".

 * I have got my rape hat on, honey, but I always could accessorize.
 * "Talula".

 * You thought that you were the bomb, yes well so did I.
 * "Spark".

 * Just having thoughts of Marianne, quickest girl in the frying pan.
 * "Marianne".

 * Say a word to the hangman for me, me and my baby.
 * "Little Amsterdam".

 * Is it sweet, your sting?
 * "Sweet the Sting".

 * So she prays for a prankster and lust in the marriage bed And he waits till she can give And he waits and he waits.
 * "Lust", a song on a couple's healing after trauma.

 * And I fear my fear is greater than my faith
 * "Suede".

 * Driving in my Saab, on my way to Ireland.
 * "Ireland".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Tori Amos