Natalie Merchant Quotes

 Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.

My mother was a single working mother; she started having children very young. There was a tension inside her about who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do and how she couldn’t achieve the things she wanted to.

Literature gives us a window into other people’s experiences in other places, in other times, so I thought it would be really interesting to investigate how different people had written about motherhood, and childhood.

It’s really wonderful to be able to be nobody, and then have a moment when I can be somebody, and then go right back to being nobody again.

I’ve raised my daughter with no television.

I’ve found out how overwhelming the media is and the way it drills things into your head, it’s almost like a mind control. If I could control prople’s minds, I’d like to put something useful in.