Emmylou Harris Country Quotations

It's just a sound, and a feeling that's in the music. And you either hear it and appreciate it, or you don't.

I'm very influenced by landscapes, not so much the way places look as the way the names sound. In this country we've got so many cultures, and the place names - the Spanish names and the Indian names, which are so incredibly musical.

I don't ever worry about whether I'm being true to my country roots. My country roots were adopted. I never worry about what I can do and what I should do. I just do what I want to do.

I was the audience he wanted to reach. Gram Parsons' writing brought his own personal generations poetry and vision into the very traditional format of country music, and he came up with something completely different

The reason you write [songs] is because there's something you want to say that is important to you - enough to go through all the torture of writing.

Patriotism can be good or bad. Knee-jerk patriotism can be very bad. I'm patriotic almost to the point of self-consciousness, but I love my country the way I love a friend or a child who I would correct if she was going the wrong way. Who I expect the very best from.

I do feel a little embarrassed and ashamed that I was sort of saying, "Oh, yes, I used to do country music, but I didn't inhale." Which is not true at all. I inhaled the hell out of country music.

Country taught me how to sing, it put me on a path. But I was never going to be locked into a formula. I don't want to be considered a current country artist.

I wanted to be a country artist because I wanted to carry on what Gram was doing, even though I didn't quite understand it because I had only worked with him a year. I just experimented and did what I felt was right.

You have to grow up, start paying the rent and have your heart broken before you understand country.

I'm nowhere with country music. I don't hear much of it, so I shouldn't venture an opinion, but when it finds me, it seems formulaic.

I was a folk singer who became totally over the edge with country music. I found my voice and style working with Gram Parsons. I learned how to listen to George Jones records and the Louvin Brothers.