Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Rickie Lee Jones.
Last updated on April 15, 2025.
Rickie Lee Jones is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and author. Over the course of a career that spans five decades, she has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, pop, soul, and jazz. A two-time Grammy Award winner, Jones was listed at No. 30 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll in 1999.
Popular music has always had its really horrendous stuff.
My worst job was working in the laundry of a nursing home.
As a musician, I've accomplished what I hoped to accomplish.
Whatever it is Christ said doesn't get a fair shake. There's not much written, it was done 150 years later, and it was used to create an empire. So can we get rid of all that and just see what the guy said?
When I was single my career was my life, so everything I did was of grave importance and was greatly disturbing.
You can't break the rules until you know how to play the game.
I had a terrible manager once who described my career as 'spiraling downward.'
I'm so positive.
You never know when you're making a memory.
I think we are dying in America, I think our democracy is over.
I'm easily destroyed and I operate on emotional levels.
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.
I've always had an active imagination.
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.
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 spent my childhood in an imaginary world - probably because I needed an escape. I think that's one of the reasons people have imaginations - because they can't maintain existence here.
I'm respected, I'm still working, what more could I ask?
For the most part, people use God as Santa Claus.
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.
There is no fear before and no fear after. We give our best.
My family in general - they're troubled or poorer people.
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.'
It's OK to not be political unless your country is falling apart.
I think poetry is best read to oneself.
I really enjoy creating music onstage, to participate in making music live.
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 like words. Words are places, rooms, distant airs, thin and tropical. They make us feel and imagine we are more than our bodies.
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.
Somehow credibility comes into play if you do things that are too familiar.
I want to work and be happy.
I had a terrible manager once who described my career as 'spiraling downward.
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.
He loved her, free parts and labor. But she broke down and died.
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.
Who can I turn to? Who can I trust?
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.