Emmylou Harris Quotations

There's a certain grace in accepting what your life is and embracing all the good things that have been - but there's still an expectation of good things to come. Not necessarily what you expected.

As citizens we have to be more thoughtful and more educated and more informed. I turn on the TV and I see these grown people screaming at each other, and I think, well, if we don't get our civility back, we're in trouble.

Animals have a much better attitude to life and death than we do. They know when their time has come. We are the ones that suffer when they pass, but it's a healing kind of grief that enables us to deal with other griefs that are not so easy to grab hold of.

I like to think about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works with the band, and gives a spin to the older material.

I'm blessed to be able to work at something that I'm good at, and that I love. It's not something I take for granted.

When there are dogs and music, people have a good time.

As anyone who goes into dog-rescue knows, it is not a for-profit business, but the rewards are priceless for me.

Pretty much all I say politically is I encourage people to register to vote.

You meet a lot of people and have a lot of experiences, and they color you and stay with you - but I'm not the grieving widow. Life is much more complicated and interesting and full of zigs and zags than that.

Bluegrass has a very, very strict musical form. Once you start to dilute it, it disappears.

Yes, I always say that we're a National League band. What I mean is, if you play an instrument, you have to sing. So I always call our drummer up. Even the drummer has to take a turn on the microphone.

I love Chicago, but I didn't think I had enough soul to be a Cubs fan.

You get to a certain point in your life where you get closer to the end of your life than the beginning, and it colors your life, in a way.

I look at my voice and my abilities as a gift. I don't feel that I can even take any credit for it, but it's such a huge presence in my life. It is my life. It's my identity, it's everything. And it's given me a great deal of joy and a sense of purpose - I can't imagine my life without it.

The only time I ever appeared in the 'Enquirer' was for a piece about people who let their hair grow gray. I guess I'm not much of a wild child.

I have my own biography of Gram Parsons - I don't want to be part of somebody else's.

I think musicians are always very generous in promoting anything good they hear. It's just kind of in our nature.

I didn't have any money. I had a sense of terrible loss. But what I also had was a fire in my belly. I wasn't going to go back to waiting tables. I felt I had to be better at fronting a band.

You know, I'm a fan of Laurie Anderson. One of my favorite records is 'The Ugly One With the Jewels,' a spoken-word record. It's an extraordinary album.

You really do learn every day with every dog; they are all so unique and different. But if you're patient and you understand where they're coming from, and if you are consistent, they will be fine. They teach you to give your full attention.

I have to have a guitar sitting around. I sing in the shower. I sing around the house. The music comes secondary. The lyrics come first.

I really have shaken hands with where my voice is right now. I think it's got a little deeper; it's got some more grooves in it.

I'm even able to have kind of a little bit of a second career in dog rescue. Doesn't pay anything, but it's become a real passion for me.

The crazy thing is that, if you add up the actual recording time, it was less than two weeks. But Mark was so busy that I got the tracks he mixed two at a time over a period of years. It was frustrating, because I had rough mixes of all these great songs, and he'd be like: 'Don't play them to a soul until they're finished!' I was a good girl scout, though.

I have just enough people paying attention that I have the freedom to be in charge. And I have a great record company - Nonesuch understands what I'm about.

I find with records, they become what they're going to become. They take on a power and a direction of their own. Part of making records is to honor that and not try to force it.

When he was mixing it I'd get a couple songs every week and I was, like, waiting for the mail to come. It was so exciting.

I think the frightening thing is when we lose our civility, which I think is happening across the board, and I find disturbing.

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.

Somehow, when you think about yourself in old age, you think you're going to be this completely different person that you don't even recognize - because you can't imagine it, you know?

My parents were not very happy. They were very worried about me pursuing a career that even if I had talent might not give me the happiness and the success that they - any parent hopes for their child.

I think I can be pretty focused, but as I say, it was more wanting to be the good student, seeing myself as a good student, and also, my parents had expectations. They wouldn't have cared if I got a B or a C or even a D.

Well, I'm just very blessed that I still love my work and I can still work, I still have an audience and I love what I do.

With the Constitution they set something in motion that is a pretty extraordinary document and a recipe for the way you would want people to live.

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.

I just adore him, ... He follows his heart. He must be pretty smart in business. He loves his life and that's a wonderful thing to see. So many people are the beneficiaries of his passion, his love for this music. I don't think there's another festival like this in the world.

In 1974 I was trying to get my first little band together. That year marked kind of a traumatic point in my life, but I had a lot of support from friends and family and a lot of good things ended up coming out of it.

I'm not a trained musician. When folks talk about 'Well, you go to this or that' - the tenor, or the third part - I don't really know what they're talking about.

In a town of writers, he really is our poet laureate,

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 called Linda and told her that Dolly was coming over. This one evening, there was no particular reason for it.

He's my man and I've been doing him wrong/And I'm praying for the strength not to carry on.

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.

A good song deals with the human condition, and the truth of the human condition.

I love singing. The joy of singing live - I don't think I will ever stop that.

I get a lot of sleep on the bus. I bring two dogs with me, who keep me grounded. I guess that's just in my soul. It's good to know that you're good at something.

I'm not going out there and doing the same material every night. I have this amazing audience of fans who have been listening to me, some of them since 1975.

I'm so grateful that I'm able to do something about this passion that I have for shelter animals. In a strange way, it completes me. It means so much to me and makes me feel like I'm truly making a difference.

When you're just singing a beautiful melody with a story that's true to the heart, you don't need a lot of embellishment.

I really believe that we have a responsibility, almost a sacred responsibility, to the animals that share this planet with us.

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.

Well I was born to run, to get ahead of the rest. And all that I wanted was to be the best Just to feel free and be someone I was born to be fast, I was born to run .

To me acting and singing are worlds apart.

Like falling stars from the universe we are hurled Down through the long loneliness of the world Until we behold the pain, become the pearl

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.

It takes a certain amount of courage to let the field lie fallow until you have something to say.

Yes, I always say that were a National League band. What I mean is, if you play an instrument, you have to sing. So I always call our drummer up. Even the drummer has to take a turn on the microphone.

...The world has lost a legend, and I have lost a friend. Johnny Cash was the rare soul who could be both...

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

I'm just too busy living every day to really spend a lot of time thinking 'am I old?' I'm this age. I am in this moment and in this life.

I think everyone's voice is unique. Although sometimes when you listen to the radio, it makes you wonder.

Mediocrity is gonna kill the world before Armageddon ever does.

The best way to catch a horse is to build a fence around it.

So there'll be no guiding light for you and me We are not sailors lost out on the sea We were always headed toward eternity Hoping for a glimpse of Galilee

It's basically a city of songwriters and that's what gives it it's strength, that's what gives it its lasting ability. You've got people making all different kinds of music and that's what attracts me to Nashville as Music City.

Every song that I start to write, I wonder if I'll be able to write it.

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.

Simplicity can intensify the emotion.

If I'm crazy, I'm blissfully so!

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.

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

I was feeling single, seeing double, wound up in a whole lotta trouble.

Normal is a cycle on a washing machine.