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Creativity Quote by Alanis Morissette

"I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old"

About this Quote

Luck is doing a lot of work here - and Alanis Morissette knows it. By framing her nine-year-old certainty as “I happen to be lucky,” she sidesteps the usual pop-star mythology of destiny and replaces it with something both humbler and sharper: the idea that clarity is an unevenly distributed resource. Some kids get to treat ambition like a toy they can pick up early; others are busy surviving, adapting, or simply not being asked what they want.

The line also functions as a quiet defense against the suspicion that success is just ego with good PR. Morissette, whose career has always carried a confessional charge, signals self-awareness: knowing your path young isn’t moral superiority, it’s circumstance. “Happen to be” is the tell. It implies randomness, access, and timing - the invisible scaffolding behind any “I made it” narrative.

Context matters because Morissette’s breakthrough arrived wrapped in authenticity politics. Jagged Little Pill hit during an era hungry for “real” emotion, yet the industry packaging of young women was notoriously coercive. In that light, the quote reads as both gratitude and armor: she asserts agency (“I knew”) while acknowledging the lottery of being able to claim it.

Subtext: early certainty can be a gift and a trap. It streamlines a life, but it also narrows it; you become the person who always knew, even when you’re still changing. That tension - between self-determination and the chaos that grants it - is exactly the kind of contradiction her music has always mined.

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TopicCareer
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Morissette, Alanis. (2026, January 17). I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-happen-to-be-lucky-in-that-i-knew-what-i-wanted-34741/

Chicago Style
Morissette, Alanis. "I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-happen-to-be-lucky-in-that-i-knew-what-i-wanted-34741/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-happen-to-be-lucky-in-that-i-knew-what-i-wanted-34741/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.

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Alanis Morissette on career clarity and luck
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About the Author

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Alanis Morissette (born June 1, 1974) is a Musician from Canada.

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