Joking about cracks in her voice: "I've flown on too many planes and smoked too much pot, and that's what happened to my voice." NEW
About focussing on something: "(I'm) someone who likes to organize my sock drawer instead of finishing a song." NEW
About Swindler: "I play it all the time because I feel guilty, I think of my songs as my children and I feel like this one hates me because it didn't make the album." NEW
About favorite songs to play: "I like singing, Who's To Say. I think people really get into that song. And Half a Week Before the Winter. Twilight I think is a crowd favorite." NEW
About the musical landscape: "I should have been coming out in the 70's. It would have been a totally different musical landscape. I might have fit a little better." NEW
About Stephan Jenkins: "He was always really nice. He bought me flowers and welcomed me to the tour, but I just felt suspicious of men in general at that point. He was trying, but it wasn't happening. He came into my dressing room once, like weeks into the tour. He handed me this white, ivory necklace with a black cord, and I was like, 'What is this? Now you're giving me gifts?' He was like, 'It's a raccoon penis bone...' and then he gave me Sarah (Leroy's book), and it immediately made me curious and comforted that he wanted to share things with me. I just thought that was so rare for the frontman of a band to do. They just tend to be really one-dimensional." NEW
When asked if she enjoyed being at the Grammy's: "Being at the actual Grammys? No. I enjoyed the attention... but it's one of the most stressful awards." NEW
About her butt: "I definitely have one of the better (behinds) in the music industry, and no one will see it because I'm sitting at the piano!" NEW
About the censoring of White Houses #2: "'White Houses' was censored on MTV and VH1. MTV thought it was too focused on sex, which I think is hypocritical because all they show is ass. The song is about sex, not completely, but mostly." NEW
About the censoring of White Houses #1: "I completely blame the censoring of my song on Janet Jackson's right boob."
The benefits of being famous: "I get lots of free lotion!"
At the age of three: "I was playing piano and eating dirt."
About the 2004 tour: "It's really intimate for the fans. You can almost reach out and touch me. I hope, of course, that people don't."
Before setting foot in a stip club: "We've done politics, now let's do sex!"
When leaving the strip club #1: "That was disappointing. The dancers looked bored. And the room was really musty. I felt too close to other people's... bodily fluids."
When leaving the strip club #2: "I love strippers!"
When asked what inspires her: "A glass of red wine. That's the trick every time."
After deciding not to go fishing: "If I had seen a shark, I'd have shit myself."
At the Vaginas Vote, Chicks Rock concert: "This is the most vaginal evening I've ever been to. But I'm proud. To have one, I mean."
About the White Houses video: "There's a bit of schizophrenia in the video."
How her dad introduced her to pop music at the age of four: "He'd say, Okay, Vanessa, this is the Grateful Dead. And I'd ask, Are they dead? And he'd very patiently say, No, they're not dead. I learned a lot about different kinds of music from him, very early on."
About learning the piano: "I loved to play, but when it came to doing the exercises, I'd run upstairs and watch TV instead!"
About getting a tan: "I don't really like to lay out, but I've decided that my goal this year is to get a decent tan without looking like an OOMPA LOOMPA - you know, that orange colour."
About Harmonium: "I've killed myself for this record! It's the most important record 'cause it's your second one so I think either I get to establish my place in music or I don't."
About the White Houses video: "I'm a musician who just sits there forever, and I'm someone who likes to jump around and move. I actually have legs!"
When one of the piano pedals broke at Ithaca College: "Ok, it's time to play: 'What's wrong with Vanessa's piano'."
When bumping into Adam Duritz (Counting Crows): "Adam? Are you Adam? Hi, I'm Vanessa, I sing with you sometimes."
About the Spyhunter 2 arcade game: "I should be the 'Spyhunter' chic, but my boobs aren't big enough. Man, all of them have huge boobs."
After sharing some inner thoughts with her audience: "I understand if you don't want to come back. I just like to talk to people."
About her new couch: "I got my couch in yesterday, for those who care about the interior design of my apartment. It's really comfortable and I really feel like I now have a home in Manhatten, because I have a good couch. That's my introduction into the next song, which has nothing to do with couches."
About a wall in the Village Underground in New York: "I really apologise for the wall here."
About her clown shirt: "So I went to Paris and London last week for the first time ever. It was so amazing. The Notre Dame made me cry. It was the most inspiring trip. I saw Picasso and all his stuff, but the most important part was the clown shirt that I purchased. It doesn't really look like a clown shirt. I had to explain this to the guy at customs, because when I listed the items I'd purchased I put 'clowns shirt'. [silence] The clown shirt... ugh nevermind. [silence] No it's just, you know..., there was nice things to buy, but it wasn't to me..., oh I give up."
About looking scary: "I'm not trying to be Michael Jackson this evening. I was cutting a pineapple, cause they're really good right now and I cut my finger. I might need a stitch, but I'm okay for this evening."
After playing just one song on a show in New York: "I don't have any fun stories. I really wanted to be funny, but nothing happened to me. This is really boring. I don't even know what I do anymore. So I don't have anything to tell you."
About changing the lyrics to A thousand Miles for the European tour: "I'd walk one thousand six hundred and nine kil-o-meters if I could just see you...tonight... You know what? If they don't understand it, they're just gonna have to deal, because I'm not changing it. Uh-uh. I'm not changing a thing."
About shooting the video for A thousand Miles: "We were going about 25-30 miles an hour and I was belted down, so I kept shouting "Go faster! Go faster!" because I'm an adrenaline junkie. And Gizmo was just like, "Uhhh." It was this great moment for me: Here I am being pulled along while playing a piano that an owl is s---ting all over. I was like, I have arrived."
About being famous: "I went horseback riding the other day and I got a nice big chunk of horse manure kicked into my face and it's like -- I mean, it just has such a unique way of just slapping you right back into reality."
About getting attention: "I don’t really think being on the cover of Maxim will help me to sell records. Frankly, I don’t need to be in my underwear to command attention from men. I can do it just as well by playing my piano."
Talking about obsessions: "And I'm obsessed with Martha Stewart, too! All I really wanna be is a domestic goddess, and I can already make a killer salmon teriyaki!"
About vampire novels: "I'm obsessed! Vampires are soooo sexy!"
About performing on The Tonight Show: "Ohmygawd! I'm on 'The Tonight Show' " tomorrow and I didn't even tell my parents! No, wait! I did tell my parents. Sheesh. These things are happening so fast I forget to tell other people about 'em!"
About getting fired from all her jobs as a waitress: "One only lasted two days, I was still in training, but they pulled me aside and said 'You just don't have the right attitude for our restaurant,' then gave me $50 and sent me on my way. I cried the whole way home, thinking 'What am I gonna do?' "
While watching a food server: "I have total sympathy for what she's going through, and how hard she's working. And I'll tell ya, I am so happy I'm not waiting tables myself right now. I don't have to get up and go waitressing anymore. I can go out and play my songs somewhere instead!"
About Be not Nobody "I'm very proud of the record. It's very clear. I speak and the piano speaks. The second record I'm looking for it to be a bit dirtier, a bit more raw. And at the same time experimenting sonically. I will always use strings, and more flutes and brass. It kind of reflects the way I dress. I need lots of different things going on."
About piano training: "It was like boot camp."
About writing songs: "The way I write is confusing to me. I will sit down at the piano, and it's like a tide. It's very healing. I have no control over how it works. It scares me sometimes. I say things in my songs, I discover things about myself in my songs that I would have never discovered if I had never written the song. It surprises me every time."
About Britney and Christina: "I think Britney’s hot! I think Christina is a little much for me, but I mean they do their thing, and they’re both talented in their ways. I don’t know why I’m compared to them. I mean, I understand why I get asked the questions, but it’s just [that] they’re different worlds. I don’t look down on what they do, and I hope they don’t look down on what I do. It’s all love."
About being a pop star: "You can be a singer/songwriter and be a pop star at the same time. And it doesn’t mean that I’m going to turn into a blonde half-naked chick."
About her first year in showbiz: "This year has been amazing, and I think it’s been really stressful and really tiring, but at the same time, it’s kind of started a career for me, and I’m looking forward to just continuing on with making good art — and keeping clothed."
About Neil Young: "The fact that he [Young] knows who I am is pretty surreal… I blushed a deep red when I got the call from my manager requesting me to play the [Bridge School] benefit and then, of course, I called mom."
About performing with Elton John: "Elton is a total badass on the piano. I'm hoping he lets me borrow a pair of his whacked out glasses so that I can pay him true homage. Love him."
About not being a pop princess: "I'm as far from a little pop girl as you can possibly be, I think. But it doesn't mean that I don't make music that happens to be popular, thank god. I am very lucky. I would still be doing what I am doing even if it wasn't so popular. I would still be playing in dirty little clubs, you know?"
At one of her shows: "This stage smells like fish!"
About her tourbus: "Everything kinda smells like ass."
About her parents: "My parents aren't strict. They're wise. I've been living on my own since I was fourteen. I'm the independent chick."
About guys: "I'm pretty laid back about guys. If you have to do something crazy to get him to notice you, then he's not worth the time."
About being a waitress in Hell's Kitchen: "I learned that I am a lazy waitress and that I don't like hungry New Yorkers."
About Dr. Ruth: "I met her once at a dinner. She was sitting next to me, propped up on a pillow because she's so tiny. It was rad! She was like my grandmother for the evening. She's always my answer when people ask me who my favorite celebrity is."
About sports: "I love sports. I was always a really quick runner. I was good at soccer, but I was the only chick on the team so it kinda sucked. I still feel like the only chick on the team sometimes!"
Torry Castellano, The Donnas: "No we didn’t beat up Vanessa Carlton, even though she thought we were the stylists on the Teen People photo shoot."
About one of her shirts: "Shit! Whenever I wear this shirt, the sweat marks appear."
Before playing Pretty Baby on one of her live shows: "This song is for everybody who wants to get some."
About Pretty Baby: "I wasn't in love when I wrote this, which is testament to the fact that most songwriters are full of shit."
About Prince: "This is a song about lovin', or hurtin', they're very interchangeable."
About A thousand Miles 2: "I was frustrated with writer's block, so I put the song aside for six months. Later that year I was doodling on the piano and I played the beginning of what we now call A thousand Miles for a producer. He stopped me in the middle of the song and asked me what it was. I said, 'Nothing.' He said, 'You have to finish that.' So I finished the song that Saturday night in an hour."
About A thousand Miles 1: "My favorite part of the song is the melody of the piano. It's an ode to my love of classical music."
About Be not Nobody: "I don't think people are aware why they like it, but the music-buying and -listening masses, their ears are far more sophisticated than record companies think. If you went up to anyone in the street, I don't think they could define what they like about my music. I think there's a melodic roller coaster you always hear in all of my songs, and I think it ends up being a very colorful listen. It kind of stands out when it's playing next to other songs that are custom-made for the radio. And I think that's what people are connecting with, that's what people miss, and that's what people want to hear over and over again."
About getting signed: "It's always a strange thing, the inner workings of a record company, but if they didn't like what I was doing, I could always go someplace else."
About Thanksgiving: "Thanksgiving means suffering through chewy turkey that my mother insists is the best in the land. And it's horrible. Thanksgiving is just about appreciating and observing the craziness of your own family and it's really fun. At times it can get a little intense and crazy, but there's so much drama that happens on Thanksgiving day I think in every household, whether it's kind of underneath the surface or not, I think it's a big social experiment, especially when my mom's cooking the turkey."
Talking about religion: "I'm a very spiritual person and my mom and my dad, they believe in God, but there's no sense of following a rigid set of rules in terms of associating our family with a religion. Yeah, my mom's Jewish and so the kids are Jewish, and my father's Catholic, so, you know, it's an interesting mix. Ultimately, I find that me being part of a religion, I feel claustrophobic in that. I like to kinda have my own rendition of what that is."
About New Year's eve: "It means going to bed so early and just being so bored. It just means kinda being left with this feeling like, 'Wasn't something else supposed to happen?' And it never does. But, you know, it's good, you get the day off the next day. That's about it."
Talking about her piano: "I will play the piano until I have arthritis and can’t play anymore."
After winning a VH1 Big in 2002 award: "I won a submarine."
Talking about her mother: "She’s back at home. We’re having a tiff at the moment, we’re not speaking. Things are kind of awkward between us. You know, I’m in a place where I don’t think many 22-year-old girls are, and she’s having trouble coming to terms with that. I think it’s difficult for her because she was a brilliant artist herself, brilliant but frustrated." (september 2002)
About being homesick: "I was completely fearless at 14. I felt absolutely no qualms about going away to study ballet because I was so madly in love with it. I was never homesick. It’s strange, because I had a stronger sense of myself at 14 than I did later in life. By the time I was 18, I suppose you could say I’d become something of a lost soul."
About the next album: "I’m still learning and developing all the time. My next album, I can promise you, will be much more provocative, much dirtier."
After burping during an interview: "Oops. Shall we pretend that didn’t happen?"
Talking about her breasts: "Do you think it would have helped if I’d shown one?" she asks. Carlton has just come off stage, having played a thoroughly desultory 20-minute set. The audience, comprised of New York’s beautiful people and a handful of minor celebrities, didn’t pay her the slightest bit of attention. "Maybe if I had shouted, Look my nipple! People would have stopped talking and looked up."
Talking about Avril Lavigne: "She's so adorable. I remember, she came fresh in from Canada. And she's just like this wide-eyed girl, she had cornrows. She's very sweet and, you know, I told (her), 'Call me if she had any questions,' you know? I just feel like kind of her older sister or something."
About dating rumours: "I'd be a tired girl if i was really dating everyone who people said i was dating!"
About a piano: "Eww dirty piano."
About feeling sexy: "Do I feel sexy?" Carlton repeats, when asked. "Oh yes, definately. These people do a fabulous job. I mean, look at me. I'm sick as a dog right now, but I look like one seriously hot chick." She smiles with satisfaction. "See, fame does have its compensatimons."
About glow sticks: "I just think it's fun to glow. I mean glowing in the dark is very fun."
About getting a record deal: "I was really hoping no one would sign me, because then they'd find out that I only had four songs."
Talking about the weather: "I like talking about the weather, because it's very important."
About getting famous 1: "I was on the airplane this morning and the girl next to me was humming “A Thousand Miles”. I don’t think she recognized me with the hat, but I was really getting a little nervous."
About getting famous 2: "I'm the exact same girl as I was before.. (just as sleepy)."
About autographs: "I am the worst autograph signer in the history of the universe. I always want to write something special but I can’t think of anything. When I finally do write something, it’s really stupid and I spell something wrong. People are just like, “Sign your name!” I don’t want to just sign my name. I have a better autograph then I used to. I signed my name one time and my dad said I have the ugliest signature. I was so insulted. Now I’m working on it."
After meeting Bono: "He kissed my hand. I can die now."
In general: "Sometimes when things are not correct, they make so much more sense."
After visiting Jamaica: "All I have to say is that I stayed at Hedonism 3. It was the most alarmingly naked place I've ever been to. No one told me everyone was gonna be nude. Needless to say there was a lot of shriveledness going on. I'm so ecstatic about being home right now. I will not join a nudist colony. I will not join a nudist colony. I will not join a nudist colony."
After getting lost in her car: "Needless to say, the grapes helped me find my way home."
Talking about Raleigh: "I'd like to report strange squirrels in the area around the Lincoln Theatre."
Just before Be not Nobody was released: "My album is sitting in brown boxes all over the country waiting their turn to get played. I might as well be in there with them. It feels like Christmas Eve or something."
About using her laptop: "This is officially the first time that I have ever posted a message from my on laptop. Miracles do happen. Of course I've already lost the plug/ adapter thingy..."
Before performing at the MTV Beachhouse: "I'll be sweating my ass off. Don't judge me on my sweatiness. I usually smell good despite it all."
About being a waitress: "I would get personally involved. I was always distracted and using my hands too much and acting out all weird about it while trying to describe the fish. I wanted the connection. I needed the connection. I was the kind of waitress that they either tipped me more than the bill or didn't tip me at all."
About touring with the Goo's and 3EB: "I'm definitely the odd one out. I mean, I'm the girl -- the only girl for miles around, so I stick out like a sore thumb."
All from .info
