Top 40 Emmylou Harris Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

2. “Normal is a cycle on a washing machine.”

— Emmylou Harris

3. “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

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

— Emmylou Harris

5. “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

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

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris

8. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

9. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

10. “Mediocrity is gonna kill the world before Armageddon ever does.”

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris

13. “I love singing. The joy of singing live – I don’t think I will ever stop that.”

— Emmylou Harris

14. “If I’m crazy, I’m blissfully so!”

— Emmylou Harris

15. “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

16. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris

18. “Simplicity can intensify the emotion.”

— Emmylou Harris

19. “Every song that I start to write, I wonder if I’ll be able to write it.”

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris

21. “I have my own biography of Gram Parsons – I don’t want to be part of somebody else’s.”

— Emmylou Harris

22. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

23. “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

24. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

25. “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 .”

— Emmylou Harris

26. “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

27. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

28. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

29. “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

30. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris

32. “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

33. “I love Chicago, but I didn’t think I had enough soul to be a Cubs fan.”

— Emmylou Harris

34. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris

39. “To me acting and singing are worlds apart.”

— Emmylou Harris

40. “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.”

— Emmylou Harris

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

— Emmylou Harris