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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
As anyone who goes into dog-rescue knows, it is not a for-profit business, but the rewards are priceless for me. – Emmylou Harris
I have my own biography of Gram Parsons – I don’t want to be part of somebody else’s. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
I think musicians are always very generous in promoting anything good they hear. It’s just kind of in our nature. – Emmylou Harris
Bluegrass has a very, very strict musical form. Once you start to dilute it, it disappears. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
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. – Emmylou Harris
