Sarah McLachlan

If you love large, you’ve got to hurt large. If you’ve got a lot of light, you’ve probably got an equal amount of darkness.

Water is very forgiving. Everything lifts in water.

I think a lot of contemplation happens in bathtubs. It does for me. Nothing like a hot bath to ease the tension and think about what’s going to happen next.

Nothing outside of my child is important.

I try so hard to live in the moment – I don’t think ahead very much.

I play piano every day.

I think I’ve become a much better singer and a much better player. Years and years of playing a couple of hours every day will do that.

We try to create this interesting appearance to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

I’m really lucky that my record companies have been patient with me and leave me alone and give me the time to make it right in my mind.

I write music all the time. When I talk about having writer’s block, it’s more to do with lyrics than anything else.

People’s ignorance really pisses me off. Stupidity is when you can’t help it-ignorance is when you choose not to understand something.

I think often sadness is a great place to get songs from.

Happiness is like a cloud, if you stare at it long enough, it evaporates.

I kind of have a happy magnet. I can’t stand being depressed, so I work my ass off to get out of it as soon as possible.

I don’t tend to question things that much. If it feels right, I go for it.

I’ve always been incredibly lucky that the music that I make, other people like it.

The more we take the less we become, the fortune of one man means less for some.

It’s an amazing luxury to say I’m 31 years old and I’m gonna take a year off. That’s pretty amazing.

I don’t think about what other people want from me.

They are very personal, emotional songs – people react to them very strongly.

Time is a beautiful thing. It’s like when you meet an old lover on the street six years later and they don’t look so ugly anymore.

Deadlines are meant to be broken. And I just keep breaking them.

‘Time after Time’ is one of the best pop songs ever written, in my opinion. It’s an incredible, beautiful, timeless song.

I’ve heard myself referred to as a quiet superstar, and I don’t quite know what that means.

I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to go crazy. I don’t party like I used to.

I’m not a media darling. I’m not on the cover of all these magazines. I just quietly do my thing.

It’s a big challenge for me to keep my integrity and some of my privacy intact.

I sort of feel like music saved my life when I was young. This is the one thing that I knew I was good at.

It’s a very romantic sentiment, but to think that you would die if you didn’t write, well, I would definitely choose to not write and live.

I was a pretty insecure kid, didn’t have a lot of friends, and was picked on a lot, and music gave me confidence.

Trying to force creativity is never good.

I go out on the road for much longer than I probably should and lose more of myself than I should.

We showed the industry that female artists could attract the same audiences as the big male stars.