Ronstadt Quotes & Sayings

I'm a combination of Linda Ronstadt, Loretta Lynn and Ralph Stanley. — Patty Loveless

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

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

In the Troubadour days, it was all those songwriters that I hung around with all the time, so I could get songs and find out what was going on. So we all knew each other, and we just carried each other's word around. — 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

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

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

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

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

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 admire people's marriages, and I think it's a wonderful thing to have, but I don't think it's the only way to live. I think there are many ways to live and many ways to establish intimate support in your life that can be from family or friends or great roommates that you like. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

I think there's just a lot of compassion in art. Again, when you're doing something that resonates with somebody else, you're going through an experience another person has had, whether it's been a painful experience or a joyous experience or a happy experience. — Linda Ronstadt

I think there's mind in nature. There's a power in nature, and there's a universal power that you'd better not ignore. — Linda Ronstadt

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

I believe in the empirical wisdom of science, just to start with, so I hope that there might be some treatment out there that might be helpful. — Linda Ronstadt

People don't realize that by voting Republican, they voted against themselves ... I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don't know anything about the Iraqis, but they're angry and frustrated in their own lives. It's like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy was bad and people felt kicked around. They looked for a scapegoat. Now we've got a new bunch of Hitlers. — Linda Ronstadt

I had a galvanised voice: I could sing through a 105 fever or a flu or a root canal or anything that you could throw at me. — 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 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

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

I only notice the clothes I'm wearing. — 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 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

Story is what's most important. — 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

When I would be on the stage singing, I would see a movie of something that happened, I would be telling the story. I would be describing the story in sound, but my goal would be to make somebody else run their own movie. — 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

I can remember sitting at the piano. My sister was playing, and my brother was singing something, and I said, 'I want to try that.' — 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

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

Besides, when I read the list of people who are supporting Kerry, if I wasn't already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched. Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that's a good reason right there to vote for Bush. — Alice Cooper

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

People have often written about me, that I did this for this reason and that for that reason, and they're usually 98 percent wrong. — Linda Ronstadt

We wanted to sing about the passions of mature women: love and concern for our children, love between trusted and treasured friends, the precariousness of romantic love, the difference between the love you give to the living and the love you give to the dead, the bitterness of a lost love remembered, and the long, steady love you keep for good. — Linda Ronstadt

I'm your basic atheist that believes in maybe - I'm a spiritual atheist. — 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

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

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

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

Time washes clean, love's wounds unseen. — 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

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

The music that I chose during my life, it wasn't arbitrary. It was all in my family home when I was growing up. I never tried to record anything I hadn't heard before the age of 10. Otherwise, I couldn't do it authentically. — 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

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

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

Cocaine made people deaf, it made people dead and it made people real obnoxious. — 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

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

I didn't love Jim Morrison. There was something very reptilian about him. And I didn't care for his singing, but his band! The Doors were fantastic. — Linda Ronstadt

I'm more into the old-school country myself, like Dolly Parton, and I guess it wouldn't be typical, but I really love Linda Ronstadt. — Sara Rue

Marijuana has a lot of very good medical uses, and I truly believe it should be legal, but for just recreational use it wasn't my drug. I didn't like it. — Linda Ronstadt

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

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

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

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

I listen mostly to live music, and mostly my musical experience was playing music with other people. — 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

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

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

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

Music isn't just for professionals. We delegate all of our music and our dancing and our art to professionals. It's silly. We should be doing our own dancing and drawing. — 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

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

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