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

I never thought I’d write, because I’d never written anything in my whole life. — 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 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 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

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

I’m your basic atheist that believes in maybe–I’m a spiritual atheist. — Linda Ronstadt

That’s mind–boggling, sesame street. — Linda Ronstadt

Don’t know much, but I know I love you. — Linda Ronstadt

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead of talking about that, wed sing together, wed have a great time, singing is what brought your family together. — 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

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

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

I got to lIve a lot of my dreams, and I feel lucky about It. — 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

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

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

I think that Frank Sinatra was maybe the greatest pop singer. — 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 are a lot of aspiring singers who are not paid attention to because they don’t look like a fashion model. — Linda Ronstadt

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

That was the first job i was ever offered where i actually got to sing like That. — 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

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

I can’t sing half as well as Claudia Lennear. Hats off to her, but somehow, things happened for me. — Linda Ronstadt

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

When the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby, it helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky. — 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

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

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. — 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

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

Jerry brown likes passionate music. Jerry brown likes passionate music, passionate women, we had a really good time together. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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 just lost a lot of dIfferent colors of my voIce, sIngIng Is really complex. and I was made most aware of It by havIng It banIshed. I can stIll sIng In my mInd, but I can’t do It physIcally. — 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

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’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

After i turned 50, my voice began to change, as older voices will, i re–crafted my singing style and looked for new ways to tell a story with the voice i had. — Linda Ronstadt