Linda Ronstadt quotes

The essential elements of singing are voice, musicianship, and story. It is the rare artist that has all three in abundance.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Artist #Voice #Singing

The dream world of sleep and the dream world of music are not far apart. I often catch glimpses of one as I pass through a door to the other, like encountering a neighbor in the hallway going into the apartment next to one’s own. In the recording studio, I would often lie down to nap and wake up with harmony parts fully formed in my mind, ready to be recorded. I think of music as dreaming in sound.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Dream #Lying #Sleep

The only reason to be with somebody is that they make you a better person and you make them a better person.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Reason #Better Person #Persons

I grew up singing Mexican music, and that's based on indigenous Mexican rhythms. Mexican music also has an overlay of West African music, based on huapango drums, and it's kind of like a 6/8 time signature, but it really is a very syncopated 6/8. And that's how I attack vocals.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Mexican #Singing #Signatures

The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Love #Dream #People

This is an election year, and I think we're in desperate trouble and it's time for people to speak up and not pipe down. It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Christian #Real #Thinking

Your musical soul is like facets of a jewel, and you stick out one facet at a time ... (and) I tend to work real hard on whatever it is I do, to get it up to speed, up to a professional level. I tend to bury myself in one thing for years at a time.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Real #Jewels #Years

Being an entertainer, especially in times like these, is really a public service.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Public Service #Entertainers

I dont think you can look for love. All you can do is get yourself in a situation where you dont discourage something that may be rather nice.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Nice #Thinking #Looking For Love

I don't record (any type of genre of music) that I didn't hear in my family's living room by the time I was 10. It just is my rule that I don't break because ... I can't do it authentically ... I really think that you're just hard-wiring (synapses) in your brain up until the age of maybe 12 or 10, and there are certain things you can't learn in an authentic way after that.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Thinking #Brain #Age

Everybody has their own level of doing their music. ... Mine just happened to resonate over the years, in one way and another, with a significant enough number of people so that I could do it professionally.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Years #Numbers #People

Mainly, when I ran into Emmylou Harris, that was it, you know? We could finish each other's sentences musically, and personally, too. We have a very shared, similar sensibility. And that was a friendship that really opened up a tremendous number of musical doors for me.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Doors #Numbers #Musical

People have often written about me, that I did this for this reason and that for that reason, and theyre usually 98 percent wrong.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#People #Reason

My feeling about school was that it interfered with my reading.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Education #Reading #School

I feel sorry for a culture that depends too much on delegating its musical expression to professionals. It is fine to have heroes, but we should do our own singing first, even if it is never heard beyond the shower curtain.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Music #Sorry #Hero

the relentless touring and endless repetition of the same songs over and over again promoted a creeping awareness that my music had begun to sound like my washing machine.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Music #Song #Sound

American radio from the '30s through the '60s was just fabulous. There was such a diversity.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Diversity #Radio #Fabulous

There should not be a question of legal or illegal immigration. People came and immigrated to this country from the time of the Indians. No ones illegal. They should just be able to come.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Country #People #Immigration

I love sex as much as I love music, and I think it's as hard to do.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Music #Sex #Thinking

We were raised with the idea that we had limitless chances and we got very shocked to learn that wasn't the case.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Ideas #Chance #Limitless

In the United States, we spend millions of dollars on sports because it promotes teamwork, discipline, and the experience of learning to make great progress in small increments. Learning to play music does all this and more.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Teamwork #Sports #Play

...I think it was a modest thing I did (Fahrenheit 9/11) ... this is an election year ... I'm not telling them how to vote. I'm saying get information about the issues ... at first there's just silence, then there's 'Yeah!' and then there's 'Boo' ... I have never seen a reaction like this, in all my years of touring ... Clear Channel can't threaten to not play my records because they are not going to play them anyway ...
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Music #Thinking #Years

Someone once asked me why people sing. I answered that they sing for many of the same reasons the birds sing. They sing for a mate, to claim their territory, or simply to give voice to the delight of being alive in the midst of a beautiful day. Perhaps more than the birds do, humans hold a grudge. They sing to complain of how grievously they have been wronged, and how to avoid it in the future. They sing to help themselves execute a job of work. They sing so the subsequent generations won’t forget what the current generation endured, or dreamed, or delighted in.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Beautiful #Jobs #Voice

I wish I had as much in bed as I get in the newspapers.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Sex #Wish #Bed

Music is a work in progress. On a record, it gets frozen in time. And it's oddly unnatural.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Progress #Records #Frozen

I first knew Laurie Lewis by her considerable reputation as a fiddle player and a writer of songs. When an opportunity came along to sing with her I seized it. Getting to know her as a singer and a person has been pure pleasure. Her voice is a rare combination of grit and grace, strength and delicacy. Her stories are always true.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Song #Opportunity #Player

Being a celebrity made me so uncomfortable that I would have preferred standing behind the amplifiers.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Made #Uncomfortable #Audience

In committing to artistic growth, you have to refine your skills to support your instincts.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Skills #Support #Growth

the greatest sin is carelessness.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Sin #Carelessness #Shortcomings

There are a lot of aspiring singers who are not paid attention to because they don't look like a fashion model.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Fashion #Looks #Attention

I can draw with sound. That's the most useful thing I learned in terms of what my craft is...The arrangements were mine. They were little lines and stuff that I had written myself...And I was locked into this idea that vocals didn't count, melodies didn't count, songwriting craftsmanship didn't count. The only thing that counted was high arching guitar solos.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Ideas #Guitar #Lines

Judy Henske, who was the then reigning queen of folk music, said to me at The Troubadour, 'Honey, in this town there are four sexes. Men, women, homosexuals, and girl singers.'
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Girl #Sex #Queens

Even though I know how very far apart we are, it helps to think we might be wishing underneath the same bright star.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Romantic #Stars #Thinking

Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Philosophy #Thinking #Tonight

Rampant eclecticism is my middle name.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Names #Middle

I can sing better after shooting smack in both arms than after eating too much,
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Shooting #Arms #Too Much

When the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby, it helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Sadness #Sleep #Night

The constant fear of a performer is to become what is reflected back at you.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Constant #Performers

Life's full of loss, who knows the cost, living in the memory of the love that never was.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Memories #Loss #Poetry

Love will abide, take things in stride.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Adages #Stride

Time washes clean, love's wounds unseen.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Unseen #Adages #Wounds

So goodbye, I'll be leaving, I see no sense in this crying and grieving. We'll both live a lot longer, if you live without me.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Goodbye #Grieving #Rejection

You and I, travel to the beat of a different drum, can't you tell by the way I run, every time you make eyes at me.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Running #Eye #Rejection

Don't know much, but I know I love you.
-- Linda Ronstadt

#Love You #Misinterpretation