- The thing I like about singing duets is that I get things out of my voice I never get singing by myself.
- The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream.
- Art is for healing ourselves, and everybody needs their own personal art to heal up their problems.
- 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.
- 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.
- Parkinson's is very hard to diagnose. So when I finally went to a neurologist, and he said, 'Oh, you have Parkinson's disease,' I was completely shocked.
- I'm your basic atheist that believes in maybe - I'm a spiritual atheist.
- I had a galvanized voice: I could sing through a 105 fever or a flu or a root canal or anything that you could throw at me.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 smell of the carpet in a hotel room is the same everywhere.
- 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.
- 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.
- You don't forget you have Parkinson's disease, believe me, especially in the shower. If you are not paying attention, you fall 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.
- I wish I had as much in bed as I get in the newspapers.
- 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.
- 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.
- I used to feel kind of impatient with people who couldn't do things fast or couldn't remember stuff.
- 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.
- I always thought competition was for horse races and it never belonged in art. I never felt that competitive with other girl singers, really.
- Men are very delicate. They don't like being rejected.
- 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.
- I can't really walk well. The muscles don't get the electronic signals from my brain, not that there's anything wrong with the muscles themselves. It's just my brain.
- I listen mostly to live music, and mostly my musical experience was playing music with other people.
- 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.
- 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.
- I grew up in Arizona. I love it. I'm a part of the desert. I feel like, really, I'm from the Sonoran Desert, which is - extends to both sides of the border. I'm really from that part of Mexico, also. And I hate that there's a fence, you know, running through it.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The only reason to be with somebody is that they make you a better person and you make them a better person.
- I've never been happy with the quality of my work. I always felt as though my musicianship was lacking and that I should have worked harder at it when I was younger. As I sang and sang, I improved.
- 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.
- Songwriting wasn't my gift. I think you have to cultivate a gift; you have to practice and develop craft around your gift so that you can execute it in more convenient, efficient ways.
- People have often written about me, that I did this for this reason and that for that reason, and they're usually 98 percent wrong.
- I've been lucky in my life to work with people who I consider master singers.
- 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.
- To sing with Frank Sinatra in any capacity at all is overwhelming.
- 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.
- 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.'
- 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.
- I'll occasionally go and do an honor like the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund because it raises money for a very worthy organization.
- 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.
- Ninety-nine percent of singing is listening and hearing, and so then 1 percent of it is singing.
- Full disclosure here - I had a terrible crush on Smokey Robinson, like every other female on the planet.
- In the Troubadour days, it was all those songwriters that I hung around with all the time, so I could get songs and find out what was going on. So we all knew each other, and we just carried each other's word around.
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