Linda Ronstadt Quotes & Sayings

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

Since there are always talented players in these emerging categories, no matter how grating they may be to the ear of the more traditionally inclined, I was not surprised when the heavy metal band Metallica achieved a style that was huge and orchestral in its guitar textures, showing itself to be perfectly capable of producing beautiful melodies with unusual, finely constructed harmonies. — Linda Ronstadt

When I was taking arithmetic in the first grade I said to myself, "I'm going to be a singer. I don't have to worry about numbers." I didn't think I was going to be famous or a star. — Linda Ronstadt

I used to live with J.D. Souther, and I would watch him write. He's be sitting, he'd say something, and then he'd write it down. That's craft. — Linda Ronstadt

Ninety-nine percent of singing is listening and hearing, and so then 1 percent of it is singing. — Linda Ronstadt

What my true addiction is is reading. I love to read. If I'd get too loaded, I couldn't remember the sentence I just read. — Linda Ronstadt

Ninety-eight percent of the singing I did was private singing - it was in the shower, at the dishwasher, driving my car, singing with the radio, whatever. I can't do any of that now. I wish I could. I don't miss performing, particularly, but I miss singing. — Linda Ronstadt

You have the United States, and you have Mexico, and then you have this Mexican-American thing which is this third culture, which I like to call Aztlan. — Linda Ronstadt

I love everything soft, cashmere and down. I don't like anything scratchy. — Linda Ronstadt

I had a lot of chances to do things that other people don't ever get, and I have to be content with that. I have to look around for some other way to make myself useful. — Linda Ronstadt

I can't really walk well. The muscles don't get the electronic signals from my brain, not that there's anything wrong with the muscles themselves. It's just my brain. — Linda Ronstadt

To sing with Frank Sinatra in any capacity at all is overwhelming. — Linda Ronstadt

I've been lucky in my life to work with people who I consider master singers. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I'm a chameleon. I can change my voice a lot. I always was able to, because in my family's music, I was a harmony singer, and harmony singing is really hard. — Linda Ronstadt

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

Every single year since they invented sound recording it gets better and better. We've always improved it. With MP3, which just sounds awful, it's the first time in the history of recorded music that it sounds worse. It's really - and it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous. — Linda Ronstadt

As I got older, I got Parkinson's disease, so I couldn't sing at all. That's what happened to me. I was singing at my best strength when I developed Parkinson's. I think I've had it for quite a while. — Linda Ronstadt

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

Singing with Aaron Neville, he pulled stuff out of my voice I never could have gotten, because if he's providing XYZ, I have to put in ABC, and usually I don't have to put in ABC. — Linda Ronstadt

If you don't have story to tell the public at large - you have to be able to sort of go listen. — Linda Ronstadt

You don't forget you have Parkinson's disease, believe me, especially in the shower. If you are not paying attention, you fall down. — Linda Ronstadt

We've got blue light, we've got all this light flooding our bedrooms and things blinking, and you can't get a decent night's sleep. — Linda Ronstadt

I only notice the clothes I'm wearing. — Linda Ronstadt

I got to sing with Placido Domingo ... I got to sing with Aaron Neville, who is one of my favorites. Got to sing with Brian Wilson, one of the great high tenors. And Ricky Skaggs, a bluegrass tenor. I'm also proud of my musical friendship with Emmylou Harris. — Linda Ronstadt

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

The government has to spend money during a recession, because their spending is our earning. — Linda Ronstadt

The thing I like about singing duets is that I get things out of my voice I never get singing by myself. — Linda Ronstadt

Parkinson's is very hard to diagnose. So when I finally went to a neurologist, and he said, 'Oh, you have Parkinson's disease,' I was completely shocked. — Linda Ronstadt

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

Story is what's most important. — Linda Ronstadt

I never thought I'd write, because I'd never written anything in my whole life. — Linda Ronstadt

I always thought competition was for horse races and it never belonged in art. I never felt that competitive with other girl singers, really. — Linda Ronstadt

The whole thing with recording is you have to know when to turn off the tape machine and just stop recording because you want to keep fixing, fixing, fixing, you know? — Linda Ronstadt

I have always believed that one learns more from failure than from success. — Linda Ronstadt

I miss singing every day. I can't sing anymore. My voice doesn't work. I have Parkinson's disease, and it sometimes takes my words away from me. — Linda Ronstadt

I've never been happy with the quality of my work. I always felt as though my musicianship was lacking and that I should have worked harder at it when I was younger. As I sang and sang, I improved. — Linda Ronstadt

I didn't think I was a famous singer. I didn't think I was a star or that I could make the waters part - just that singing was what I was going to do. — Linda Ronstadt

I had tried marijuana several times, but in the words of my friend and longtime assistant Janet Stark, When I smoke pot, it makes me want to hide under the bed with a box of graham crackers and not share. — Linda Ronstadt

I never went to the Beatles' concerts to scream. I never screamed at anybody's show. I was on my feet with the entire, all of the crowned heads of Motown, and we were shrieking our guts out. — Linda Ronstadt

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

When you sing the same song over and over and over again, it stops meaning what it originally meant to you. It starts sounding like white noise, or my washing machine. — Linda Ronstadt

Cocaine made my nose bleed right away. I thought why do I need a nose bleed? It would make me real nervous and talk really fast. I'm already pretty good at talking too fast. I thought, "Why do I need that?" — Linda Ronstadt

I think if you do what's in your heart - Joseph Campbell always says you have to follow your bliss, and if you do, doors open where you didn't even realize there were doors. — Linda Ronstadt

For years, I've been interviewed, and they write what they thought I thought or what they thought I said. Sometimes it's accurate, and often it isn't. — Linda Ronstadt

I think if the United States gave anything to culture at large in the 20th century, the most important contribution made was the popular song. — Linda Ronstadt

I'll occasionally go and do an honor like the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund because it raises money for a very worthy organization. — Linda Ronstadt

A lot of singers that I've heard that I may not like their sensibility, but I see that they're entitled to whatever they get. People don't get there without talent, they really don't. — Linda Ronstadt

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 one's illegal. They should just be able to come. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I was never bored because I always had a book. So I had a doorway into another world or another universe. It was great. — Linda Ronstadt

The smell of the carpet in a hotel room is the same everywhere. — Linda Ronstadt

I am a believer in discipline; it takes a lot to do well. You need discipline for those little excursions into the chaotic that make life interesting. — Linda Ronstadt

The greatest sin is carelessness. — Linda Ronstadt

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

Rampant eclecticism is my middle name. — Linda Ronstadt

Up until about a hundred years ago, the world was dark at night. You got to have a real night so you could sleep. — Linda Ronstadt

I've got this weird body chemistry that I don't like to get high. I'm not going to say I never tried drugs. I tried most everything. I didn't try injectables. But I didn't like it. — Linda Ronstadt

You don't want people who have never had to deal with adversity - you want people who have been able to deal successfully with adversity. That's what adds to society. Those are going to be the hardest-working, best people. — Linda Ronstadt

I never wrote anything down. I never kept a diary, never kept a journal. I did write one letter home about touring with the Doors that I used as a reference for the book for some details there, and then I was glad I had that, but that was it. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I grew up in a big sky country. Then I lived in Manhattan, where you can only see the sky between buildings, and then I went into a building where you couldn't see the sky at all. I didn't like that so much. — Linda Ronstadt

My feeling is that the beaches should belong to everybody. Nobody should be able to build anything. It causes erosion. It's a bad thing altogether. — Linda Ronstadt

I don't think you can look for love. All you can do is get yourself in a situation where you don't discourage something that may be rather nice. — Linda Ronstadt

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

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

I always sang harmony with my family growing up. — Linda Ronstadt

I got a couple of different contacts from publishing companies saying they'd be interested in a book about my work: not a kiss-and-tell book, which I specifically put in the contract. Just a book about my work and what I did. — Linda Ronstadt

I get on the airplane and there's a screen in front of everything. You get into a taxicab in New York, there's a screen blinking at you. I think it's going to have a tremendous effect on our brains, because those bright, saturated colors and those strong lines, they do things to your brain. — Linda Ronstadt

The elements of voice and style are braided together like twine, consisting of these attempts to copy other artists, or an instrument, or even the sound of a bird or passing train. Added to these characteristics are emotions and thoughts that register as various vocal quirks, like hiccups, sighs, growls, warbles - a practically limitless assortment of choices. Most of these choices are made at the speed of sound on a subconscious level, or one would be completely overwhelmed by the task. — Linda Ronstadt

I used to feel kind of impatient with people who couldn't do things fast or couldn't remember stuff. — Linda Ronstadt

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

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

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

I thought everybody could sing, because everybody in my family could. — Linda Ronstadt

Music should be an elective experience. You should go, "I'm going to sit down and listen to some Beethoven, by God," and then you get to hear it. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I know my own father's business was very dependent on the goodwill and business and trade from people in northern Mexico. We knew their families and went to their weddings and baptisms and balls and picnics, and we had a great time with them. — Linda Ronstadt

God scares me when you get Him indoors. — Linda Ronstadt

The Mexicans have a fervent appreciation of poetry and make regular use of it. It occupies a high and ancient seat in the Mexican culture. The Aztecs called it "a scattering of jades," jade being what they valued most, far more than the gold for which they were murdered in great numbers by invading Spaniards. They felt that the more profound aspects of certain concepts, whether emotional, philosophical, political, or artistic, could be expressed only in poetry. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I wanted to sing when I was little. That's what I liked doing. It didn't occur to me that you became famous or anything like that. — Linda Ronstadt

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

Having children makes you see the world in a completely different way. When you're responsible for those little lives, you can't slough it off or forget about it until later. — Linda Ronstadt

I never thought of myself as a rock singer. I was interested in songs like 'Heart Like a Wheel,' and I liked the others for about 15 minutes. — Linda Ronstadt

I just thought that I was going to get to sing for a living and I wouldn't have to go to work in the department store or whatever else you did if you were a woman in those days. — Linda Ronstadt

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

Giggling is a plague on the nervous system that I believe is hardwired into some people's physiology and seems to be a reaction to tremendous nerves, fatigue, or self-consciousness. It is rarely a welcome occurrence to the giggler and can feel like going over Niagara Falls without a barrel — Linda Ronstadt

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

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

Everywhere you go, there's a soundtrack. You can't really quite hear it. It's just a little out of the range of hearing. — Linda Ronstadt

The trip home always seemed to take half the time, because Murphy and Little Paint were eager for their dinner. We clung like burrs on their backs and rode like the wind. We were eager for our dinner too. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I think the zenith of popular songwriting to the United States of America was that period that started in the '20s and went into the '50s. It was the period of the great American standard song. — Linda Ronstadt

Sometimes I was frivolous. Did you have some frivolous years? I had to live mine out in public. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I think that Frank Sinatra was maybe the greatest pop singer. — Linda Ronstadt

I always say if music can't make you cry, you're a hopeless case. I don't cry very much myself, but it's my job to make you cry. — Linda Ronstadt

I'd go over to my grandmother's house, and she'd be playing opera. They loved opera. Not only did they play it on the radio, but they played it on their piano. Everybody learned how to read music and how to play. — Linda Ronstadt

What I think is the universal, wonderful thing about music, is that it's very inclusive. — Linda Ronstadt