"What's really neat is I didn't have to play Holiday Inns this year. Cause I had this song coming out(?). And somebody actually said to me tonight, 'Wouldn't it be really neat if someone at Holiday Inn were covering this tonight?' I don't know. ? This is my thing." - Shaw Theatre, London UK 1/30/92

"Yeah, this is Silent and this is about a lot of things. I started it with this bumblebee riff. You know we all grew up playing...you know that bumblebee song? I decided that that song tortured me so I'm going to pay it back. - World Cafe WXPN 5/18/92

"I always hated my grandmother. She was really mean. And the town she comes from, they won't play this song. Because they think it's shit, they said this publicly. It's in Virginia. And it makes total sense because I would never eat her jam that she made so *raspberry*." - Stadtpark, Hamburg, Germany 7/8/92

"I'm not the kind of woman who takes things sitting down. I wrote Silent All These Years because you can have a big mouth and not be saying anything. I didn't know how to say 'fuck you' to the people who knew every answer about how I should live my life. I would find myself sitting with my hand on a fork and I didn't know why I wanted to go for the jugular of the person across the table. I didn't understand: What buttons is this person pushing in me?" - Glamour 8/92

"With this record, a song like Silent All These Years has a certain story line going on musically that's really the antithesis of what's going on verbally. It's counterpoint, pure and simple. But instead of French horns and cellos or something, it's words and music. And I find it very exciting when an acoustic instrument has its knife out. It can take on these different roles. The idea of being a woman... you come over to my house and I'm serving a fruit plate. That's not always going to happen. Especially if somebody isn't being polite, or if somebody's being a dick. Then I'm going to put the peelings on the floor and watch you trip, and giggle. And that's the same with the acoustic instrument. It's not always just about 'I'm vulnerable, I'm sad.' There are just as many different sides, and the beauty comes in exploring them." - Keyboard 9/92

"Um, I hated my grandmother. Anyway, she loved virgins. Loved them. You know, I totally respect that choice if that's your choice, totally respect that. But I had other things in mind. I was six. And you know you see a picture of Jim Morrison, girls, you know something's up. So my grandmother just couldn't understand this concept and I don't know how she got around this whole virginal thing but she did. So her idea of a respectable woman was a passionless woman. So we didn't get on very well. I was praying in the corner like every twenty minutes and I'd spit in her jello when she wasn't looking. Anyway, she's been dead for a long time and the interesting thing is (whispers something) I got a note from this town...of course it came from America. Only one town in the whole world wrote me a letter and it's from the town that my grandma was born in. Now they don't know this, it's um, they just don't know nee-nee-nee-nee. And the letter said, 'Dear Ms. Amos we're very sorry we can't play this song, but in our opinion it is shit.' So it gives me great pleasure to play this." - 10/30/92

"The bumblebee bee piano tinkle came first. This one evolved slowly but it stayed an obsession until it was finished. I entered boxer occupation--part of me not wanting to hear what ‘I’ was saying the other part fighting off The Brain Drain’. I finally distracted the BRAIN DRAIN with the task of filing chocolate cake recipes." - Little Earthquakes Sheet Music Book 1992

"MRL: If you could pick an artist or group to cover one of your songs, what artist, which song would you choose and why? Tori: Metallica, Silent All These Years" - Modern Rock Live 2/4/96

"On the other hand for example the commercial world has found the Big Sister Tori Amos concept already. They think : Aha! Through the Amos-woman we can reach the young, independent girls and influence them! They want to use my music and personality - image is such a dirty word - like the Trojan Horse with which they can reach the hearts, heads and purses of young girls. In America they wanted to use Silent All These Years for a beer commercial. How absurd! That can only happen in America! It's a very sensitive song, but that's how it goes : when they can bottle something in booze or sex, they won't leave it lying there." - Nieuwe Revu 2/94

"...in most people's songs men are always potent, women never have their period, rapes unexistant and orgasm vaginal or faked. They're Barbiedoll-songs, songs without pubic hair or obvious genitals; they don't fit anatomically. My songs come rather from my womb than from the heart. You know, there's some fucking going on in other people's songs, but no-one ever gets into an unwanted pregnancy. I sing : Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon." - Nieuwe Revu 2/94

"I just think I'm able to understand 'Silent' now. So the writer side of me is going, `God, these songs are very current.' They have a power that, at the time, I didn't really know how to translate on tape." - Baltimore Sun 7/94

" 'Silent' is as current to me as anything I'm writing now, and it's leading me by the hand. She's saying, 'That wasn't clever enough, Tori. That line isn't good. You can't do that. I won't let it through my door.' 'Silent' is my doorkeeper. She's really stroppy about who comes to the party." - Baltimore Sun 7/94

...Tori performed "Silent All These Years" with a band on the Jonathan Ross Show, the U.K.'s closest equivalent to America's Late Night With David Letterman; it was her first British television appearance. Tori recalls, "I almost ruined the whole thing. I was looking at that girl on the TV screen and thinking, if I stop, will she keep playing? It was all live, and for three seconds I froze in the middle of Silent All These Years, and I thought I was never going to get it together again. I just panicked." - All These Years authorized biography 1994 edition

"I: Did Tori Amos really believe that if she is unable to sing, or play the piano, there is no point in being alive? Tori: At one point I really did, Joe. And part of it was "do I want that girl around if she can't express herself through music?" Is she worth anything at all? You know what the song Silent All These Years is about. You can see the irony, right? There I was, having found a voice to express myself and suddenly I'm silenced by an accident? That was pretty creepy, to tell you the truth." - Hot Press 94

"I mean, I'd love for Metallica to do 'Silent All These Years.'" - WXRT Radio 2/96

"(Silent is an) old and dear friend. The song is one of the consistencies in my life." - Billboard 3/29/97

"I'm these extreme people and when it would come to my personal life, I would not acknowledge anything, absolutely nothing in my life (laughing) and so people that knew me would see me become like this warrior or crawl up in a little corner and not be able to even make a peep. So Silent All These Years really became sort of a mantra for me to learn how to speak up." - KROQ 5/16/97

"They felt my song Me And A Gun was a bit heavy for the ads (for RAINN) so we went with Silent All These Years which is about finding your own voice." - Q 7/97

"'Silent' helped usher a lot of new girls through the doorway. Now that ("Silent") is getting attention, there's a lot of well-wishing from all the new girls, because she taught them how to put their lipstick on. Now that she's getting her picture taken, there is no jealousy amid the troops. That song is always there for me when I need her." - Billboard 12/27/97

"It's about realizing, painfully, you've kept that voice inside yourself, locked away from even yourself. And you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces. You realize you've become your own jailer." - E Online Starboard 6/98

"One of the women that works the line (RAINN), I've known, and she came back to see me recently, and a young girl had called her, 16 years old, and said, 'It's taken me a while to get the courage to call, but my father raped me again just a while ago and my mother refuses to acknowledge it, and I just wanted to talk.' And the woman said she had Silent All These Years playing in the background and on repeat, and she finally, she said, 'I have the strength now to do what I'm gonna do because there's no way out for me'. And she jumped out of a window 15 stories high..." - Much More Music 1/5/00