Rickie Lee Jones Quotes

I like words. Words are places, rooms, distant airs, thin and tropical. They make us feel and imagine we are more than our bodies.

You never know when you're making a memory.

It's OK to not be political unless your country is falling apart.

I get weary of reading about rebirths because we're all growing all the time and it diminishes the life you've lived if you say 'I'm a new person.

My worst job was working in the laundry of a nursing home.

In my opinion, the Republican Party is the last on the list to care about the needs of old people and children and poor people.

I think I have to work to write a happy song. I write them carefully; they're simple and they're about when it's fun to walk down the street. You know? Because that's the best thing about when you're happy. It's just one little thing that makes you happy, and you're making friends. The kind of thing I can do is capture this moment.

For the most part, people use God as Santa Claus.

I would like to be a part of a community of women, and help women be empowered, but I think I'm not necessarily political. I say that because I really hate politicians, so I don't fancy sitting around and thinking about them all the time.

I really enjoy creating music onstage, to participate in making music live.

There is no fear before and no fear after. We give our best.

You can't break the rules until you know how to play the game.

I think we are dying in America, I think our democracy is over.

I was raised by a strong mother and I never felt like I had to be a role, you know, I was just me, who I am.

As a musician, I've accomplished what I hoped to accomplish.

I'm easily destroyed and I operate on emotional levels.

I want to work and be happy.

I had a terrible manager once who described my career as 'spiraling downward.

I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

I didn't have any great job prospects.

I think poetry is best read to oneself.

He loved her, free parts and labor. But she broke down and died.

Who can I turn to? Who can I trust?

Popular music has always had its really horrendous stuff.

My family in general - they're troubled or poorer people.

I always felt like my future was at stake every time I stepped on stage and that was kind of hair-raising. At some point I just went, don't be frightened, you can't do anything wrong, it's your show.

Dancin' in the welfare lines.

When I was single my career was my life, so everything I did was of grave importance and was greatly disturbing.

Love will wash you clean in the nights disgrace.

I never knew when I was gong to leave. I might be walking over to a kid's house, then of all a sudden I would just stick out my thumb and hitchhike across three states.

I've always had an active imagination.

Somehow credibility comes into play if you do things that are too familiar.

I'm respected, I'm still working, what more could I ask?

Singing other people's material was perceived, I think, as a weakness of my persona. The effect, though, was to make me dig my heels in and try even harder to combine the two.