Linda Ronstadt Quotes

“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 have always believed that one learns more from failure than from success.”

— Linda Ronstadt

“God scares me when you get Him indoors.”

— 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

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

“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

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 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

“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 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

“Sometimes I was frivolous. Did you have some frivolous years? I had to live mine out in public.”

— 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

Men are very delicate. They don't like being rejected.

— Linda Ronstadt

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

— 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

“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

“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'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

“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 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

“Full disclosure here - I had a terrible crush on Smokey Robinson, like every other female on the planet.”

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

— Linda Ronstadt

I didn't know why I couldn't sing - all I knew was that it was muscular or mechanical. Then, when I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, I was finally given the reason. I now understand that no one can sing with Parkinson's disease. No matter how hard you try. And in my case, I can't sing a note.

— 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

“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

“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

“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

“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 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

“Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight.”

— Linda Ronstadt

“Music is a work in progress. On a record, it gets frozen in time. And it's oddly unnatural.”

— 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

“Cocaine made people deaf, it made people dead and it made people real obnoxious.”

— Linda Ronstadt

I only notice the clothes I'm wearing.

— Linda Ronstadt

“The greatest sin is carelessness.”

— 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

“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

“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

“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 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

“Rampant eclecticism is my middle name.”

— Linda Ronstadt

“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

“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

“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 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

“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

“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