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I Can't Draw. But 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

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I Can't Draw. But

Linda Ronstadt

...

I Can't Draw. But 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...

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If You Don't Have Story To Tell The Public At Large - You Have To Be Able To Sort Of Go Listen.

When The Night Wind Starts To Sing A Lonesome Lullaby, It Helps To Think We're Sleeping Underneath The Same Big Sky.

Up Until About A Hundred Years Ago, The World Was Dark At Night. You Got To Have A Real Night So You Could Sleep.

I Only Notice The Clothes I'm Wearing.

The Only Reason To Be With Somebody Is That They Make You A Better Person And You Make Them A Better Person.

I Can't Sing Half As Well As Claudia Lennear. Hats Off To Her, But Somehow, Things Happened For Me.

The Constant Fear Of A Performer Is To Become What Is Reflected Back At You.

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.

What I Think Is The Universal, Wonderful Thing About Music, Is That It's Very Inclusive.

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.

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.

There Are A Lot Of Aspiring Singers Who Are Not Paid Attention To Because They Don't Look Like A Fashion Model.

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.

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.

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.

I Thought Everybody Could Sing, Because Everybody In My Family Could.

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?"

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.

Even Though I Know How Very Far Apart We Are, It Helps To Think We Might Be Wishing Underneath The Same Bright Star.

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.

My Feeling About School Was That It Interfered With My Reading.

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.

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.'

I Think Musicians Are Always Supportive Of Each Other Because They Want The Groove To Keep Going On. They Just Basically Want To Play Music.

Love Will Abide, Take Things In Stride.

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.

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.

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.

Being A Celebrity Made Me So Uncomfortable That I Would Have Preferred Standing Behind The Amplifiers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Think That Frank Sinatra Was Maybe The Greatest Pop Singer.

Don't Know Much, But I Know I Love You.

Misinterpretation

Life's Full Of Loss, Who Knows The Cost, Living In The Memory Of The Love That Never Was.

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.

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.

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.

I Wish I Had As Much In Bed As I Get In The Newspapers.

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.

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.

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.

In Committing To Artistic Growth, You Have To Refine Your Skills To Support Your Instincts.

Time Washes Clean, Love's Wounds Unseen.

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.

Somewhere Out There, Beneath The Pale Moonlight, Someone's Thinking Of Me And Loving Me Tonight.

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.

People Have Often Written About Me, That I Did This For This Reason And That For That Reason, And Theyre Usually 98 Percent Wrong.

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.

I Was Never Bored Because I Always Had A Book. So I Had A Doorway Into Another World Or Another Universe. It Was Great.

I Can Sing Better After Shooting Smack In Both Arms Than After Eating Too Much.

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.

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.

Music Is A Work In Progress. On A Record, It Gets Frozen In Time. And It's Oddly Unnatural.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Greatest Sin Is Carelessness.

Ninety-nine Percent Of Singing Is Listening And Hearing, And So Then 1 Percent Of It Is Singing.

American Radio From The '30s Through The '60s Was Just Fabulous. There Was Such A Diversity.

Art Is For Healing Ourselves, And Everybody Needs Their Own Personal Art To Heal Up Their Problems.

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.

Being An Entertainer, Especially In Times Like These, Is Really A Public Service.

Times Like These

Rampant Eclecticism Is My Middle Name.

I Never Thought I'd Write, Because I'd Never Written Anything In My Whole Life.

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.

The Thing You Have To Be Prepared For Is That Other People Don't Always Dream Your Dream.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cocaine Made People Deaf, It Made People Dead And It Made People Real Obnoxious.

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.

The Essential Elements Of Singing Are Voice, Musicianship, And Story. It Is The Rare Artist That Has All Three In Abundance.

The Government Has To Spend Money During A Recession, Because Their Spending Is Our Earning.

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.

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.

Department Stores

I Can't Draw. But 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...

I Love Sex As Much As I Love Music, And I Think It's As Hard To Do.

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.

We Were Raised With The Idea That We Had Limitless Chances And We Got Very Shocked To Learn That Wasn't The Case.

Story Is What's Most Important.

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.

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