"It was the Summer Solstice last year, and we’d been work ing in the studio recording. That night the song came to me in a dream. Everyone was still asleep, and I got out of bed and ran to the piano to try to get down as much of the melody and words as fast as I could. I felt so alive while I was trying to hold the dream before it slipped away. My whole body was alive. By the time everyone was awake, the song was finished." - New York Post 04/24/07

"Yeah, that was my contribution. I love that word (milf). If you asked me where I could stop time it would be now, at 43. To wake up feeling sensual and wanting to be in my body – I don’t want to be who I was at 30. I know I’ve aged, that there are things I don’t possess any more, but it’s how I feel inside. I’m willing to accept the lines and everything that comes with them because the feeling of being a woman, right now, is something I really treasure. That and being a mother and being in a relationship with a man I really adore." - The Sunday Herald 04/29/07

"Matt Chamberlain was really instrumental on so many but Big Wheel...I woke up in the middle of the recording. It was a 19 day recording session, 19 days straight, I'd say 12 hours a day...for the album. I mean basic tracking not all the singing and not all the overdubs and blah. And guitars came later as far as the recording. But he was there, Mac (Alladin) was there dealing with some of the early arrangements with the band and then went away and came back again when it was his turn. So Matt (Chamberlain) when I played him the beginnings of Big Wheel - I woke up and the song, I woke up from a dream and the song was there and I ran as the dawn was breaking to the studio. I ran from the house to the studio to find a piano and by the time everybody was waking up the song was written. And it was Matt who I was able to grab first and he completely understood that song and so he drove the song with that rhythm. Then Jon (Evans) came in and because of Matt's rhythm he completely just jumped in and it was written and recorded all in one day." - Synthesis 04/07

"I wanted to explore that bit of Ry Cooder influence as well as strange...I dont know what Big Wheel is. We all would look at each other and say, 'it sounds like we've been just mainlining tequila all night'. Maybe that'd be a good thing to do." - Synthesis 04/07

Interviewer: New York’s sex columnists recently wrote that a MILF is "at once repulsive and appealing." You sing about being a MILF on your new single. What’s your take on the phrase? Tori: Well, if you’re a mother, there’s nothing repulsive about it. If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn’t you like to think that’s not all there is? That you haven’t hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them? I’m really quite happy to say that in my early 40s, I wake up feeling sexy, and I can’t say I felt that way in my late 20s. - New York Magazine 05/03/07

Interviewer: Are you reclaiming the word MILF? Tori: I don’t think it’s that. I wouldn’t do a thesis on it, but I think if young boys have no problem using it, why can’t the women who are our age use it? - New York Magazine 05/03/07

"The fact that it was being banned, when you can step-by-step go through how you’re going to butcher somebody and say, ‘I’m a maneater’, on radio. To use a little [acronym], I don’t even say the words, that was enough, because it is taboo and it’s a threat, if the spiritual side of woman claims the sexual side...That’s what the whole Christian right wing is about: dividing the mother Mary and the Magdalene. You know this. When you integrate them, that means you’re whole, and that is threatening to them. You have to understand why it’s being banned, it proves my point." - Canberra Times 08/09/07

"I don’t need you to tell me I’m hot, whether you think so or not, it really doesn’t matter to me. I have to claim that, whoever I am as a woman. As a mother, to be able to look in the mirror and claim that, is the most powerful thing." - Canberra Times 08/09/07

"My parents, when they heard the song for the first time were in my truck and I was driving them down the coast somewhere in Florida. They heard the album in my car, on my truck stereo while we, you know, just got a little picnic and drove up and down. And they had the lyrics in front of them. My dad is half deaf, but my mom’s not. He turned around and said 'Mama, what is this M-I-L-F? What is that Mama?' Mom said, 'Oh Ed, I don’t know what that is. What does that mean?' And I just said 'Oh, Mom, let’s just not'. 'Oh dear, what? You think I’m born yesterday? That I can’t handle your shocking information?' And so I told them. And my father blushed and my mother roared. You know, as a minister, he knows that I live to try and bring sexuality into a place of acceptance and goodness. Just because you are in touch with your sexuality doesn’t mean you’re demonic." - Pop Matters 08/27/07

"It was during this crazy 19-day recording session, which was 10-12 hours a day, and I got up one morning with this rhythm and this song in my head. I ran across to the studio barefoot, as the sun was coming up, and I wrote the idea down and then went over to check my computer and my niece had sent me a note, knowing that I was recording, saying ‘whatever you do today, just remember you are a M-I-L-F!’ and straight away I knew that was it. I had been christened and I’ve embraced it." - BMA 09/07

"'Big Wheel' means very different things because of where it’s situated, and then 'Bouncing Off Clouds' after that. The order is very important." - North Jersey 10/10/07

"She said, ‘Just put this on.’ (a bikini) And I said, ‘No’. She said, ‘Come on! Come on! You’re a MILF! Start acting like it!’" - Between the Lines 10/25/07

Interviewer: Upon its release this past summer, your single Big Wheel was the center of controversy for the use of the M word (street parlance for an attractive mother whom a male would like to romance). Were you surprised some radio stations refused to play the song? Tori: I think it’s so funny. Doesn’t it just justify the whole point, that there are so many things played on the radio, shocking violent stuff and even shocking sexual stuff, but yet MILF is shocking. The idea that you have to remember is that the Christian side of advertising cannot accept the idea that the Mother Mary and the Magdalene can unify in women. That’s how we’ve been not as powerful within ourselves for centuries. So when you bring the mother image in with the sexual image, which is liberating, and all mothers should look at themselves in the mirror and say I’m a MILF, it’s just not accepted. Not by the Christian advertising community. And that’s why I did it. Interviewer: Invariably, it’s an empowering statement to make. Tori: That’s right. It’s funny because I’m not saying it to get your approval or to get you to agree, I don’t care what you think of me. This is about a woman looking at herself and claiming it because until she can she’s powerless. Then we’re looking for you all to call us pretty or sexy. And when a woman says, 'I’m enough', then the game is won. - Ohio News Herald 10/29/07

"My niece, who at the time was 13. She wanted me to put on a bikini for my husband. I said, 'I don’t know'. She said, 'Put it on for Uncle Mark'. I said, Things are fine for me and Uncle Mark'. She said, 'You’re a MILF, put it on'. She has been calling me that constantly." - Cleveland Free Times 10/31/07