Top 100 Etta Quotes
#1. They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I'm still vulgar. I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I've got to do something.
Etta James
#2. I was privileged to know the late, great Miss Etta James, and I did get a chance to spend some time with her and hang out with her.
Jennifer Holliday
#3. Alice interrupted. No tears, no secrets. I want the life I'm meant to have, Etta. It's as simple as that. My father always says that the way to truly live is to do so without expectations or fear hanging over you, affecting your choices ...
Alexandra Bracken
#4. Around the time I opened my second restaurant, Etta's, I had just finished judging at the Jack Daniels World Invitational BBQ Championship in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Back home in Seattle, my goal was to recreate the sweet and smoky taste of that BBQ using our local wild king salmon instead of pig.
Tom Douglas
#5. My background was always more soulful pop. I was named after Ella Fitzgerald, and when I was a kid, I was listening to Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Joss Stone. For me, it was always about the voice.
Ella Eyre
#6. Why had Althea's crazed words affected Etta like this? Then the answer came to him: she was pregnant. Women always behaved strangely when they were pregnant.
Robin Hobb
#7. Wallpaper. Decoration. Her whole life and person, whittled down to nothing. "I don't accept that ," Etta said. I'm neither of those things. And, for the record, neither are you.
Alexandra Bracken
#8. Etta grins, compliments swallowed when she sees they're clearly not required.
Menna Van Praag
#9. People always say 'Etta, you know what your problem is? You're neither fish nor fowl. There is no place to rack you.' When I would go in a record shop, you might find one or two records by me in different stacks.
Etta James
#10. Etta James is my all-time favorite singer. I've said it in every interview, in every story, in every on- and off-camera question. That music was always such a huge escape for me, even from a young age.
Christina Aguilera
#11. Growing up, I listened to a lot of jazz and blues records - John Coltrane and Etta James. I was also really into Radiohead and the BeeGees.
Alex Clare
#12. Do you think you're taking Etta out of here?"
"Yes," Kennit called over his shoulder up the sairs.
"What about all these dead men?" she shrieked after him as they strode out of her house.
"Those you may keep," Kennit replied.
Robin Hobb
#13. What to do with daughters has always been something of a problem, unless they are so pretty or so passive or so wealthy that they are snatched up as brides as soon as the come of marriageable age.
- THE COLLECTORS: DR. CLARIBEL AND MISS ETTA CONE
Barbara Pollack
#14. I grew up loving Etta James and Aretha Franklin and Al Green and Otis Redding, and I just love old-school R&B. It's just music that moves you and grooves you, and it was very important, I think, for music.
Elle King
#15. They had met at a club fifteen years before, Etta and Magnus. He had convinced her to dance with him, and she said she had been in love by the end of the song. He told her he had been in love before the beginning.
Cassandra Clare
#16. The notes of the symphony of lives, desires, and revenge suddenly swelled into a chorus of generations, blasting through Etta's mind.
Alexandra Bracken
#17. As a kid, I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Etta James and hip-hop as well as music my parents were listening to, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.
Alanis Morissette
#18. There is something about you, Etta. Something in you that cannot be quenched, by hardship or ill treatment. Your soul gleams like silver beneath a patina of hard use. He is right to love you. Any man would love you.
Robin Hobb
#19. Quote is taken from Chapter 1:
Since Etta could log in her rare Baltimore oriole sighting, she decided she'd had enough birding for one day. It was just a fun hobby, not an obsession.
Ed Lynskey
#20. Gwen," Etta said, "I don't know what in the kingdom you were thinking when you told us to pack our stuff-you know we ain't got no stuff.
Michael J. Sullivan
#21. And you know what the truly sad thing is, Etta?" Sophia whispered. "If he'd asked, if he'd put his case forward, Grandfather would have considered it. I know he would have. Because being born a bastard in this family is still preferable to being born a girl.
Alexandra Bracken
#23. The pain bursts through Etta like caffeine,
Emma Hooper
#24. How do you fight against a mountain? How do you move it when you don't even have a shovel?" "Maybe you don't have to move it," Etta said, folding the gown over the lid of the trunk. "Maybe you have to climb it.
Alexandra Bracken
#25. Etta saw the way Sophia took a deep breathe, set her shoulders back, and moved with practiced grace on her way out - and she understood something about the other girl, truly understood for the first time. Sophia wanted it, when she was only ever sent out.
Alexandra Bracken
#26. How about a kiss, hey?" Etta liked that she was still able to startle him, just a little. The blank look of concentration broke as he barked out a laugh. "I don't know if that's a wise idea. We'd never leave.
Alexandra Bracken
#27. Playing Etta James in the movie 'Cadillac Records' really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It's no fun being safe.
Beyonce Knowles
#28. You do have a choice, you know," Etta told her after a moment. "There is always a choice.
Alexandra Bracken
#29. The nice thing about life," said Miss Etta, "is you never know when there's going to be a party.
Earl Hamner Jr.
#30. Quote taken from Chapter 1:
A grave matter has just arisen." Etta hadn't intended to make the pun. She went on. "It's a problem right up your alley.
Ed Lynskey
#31. I want you to remember that - it's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises." Etta
Alexandra Bracken
#32. Etta, it could be everything, it could be nothing, what you're making up. You shouldn't let that bother you.
Emma Hooper
#33. Their thoughts did head in the same direction often enough, but there were times when Etta remained as mysterious as the stars in the sky.
Alexandra Bracken
#34. The first songs I learned was 'Crazy' by Patsy Cline and 'At Last' by Etta James. I had been growing up with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, great bands.
Sabrina Carpenter
#35. I really do love bluesy-jazzy music, so I love Etta James, B.B. King and Billie Holiday. I love that they have soul in their voices - I think that's something important is having.
Bridgit Mendler
#36. Well," Etta said weakly, "she's always told me a good challenge builds character."
"Then we'll have an excess of it," he said dryly.
Alexandra Bracken
#38. You're wrong about one thing, though," she said. Daniel looked quizzically at her. "What?" Etta reached up to his brow and brushed his hair off his forehead with a gentle caress that set his blood to pumping. Then she tilted her head back and met his gaze. "You are a hero. My hero." And
Karen Witemeyer
#39. Gabrielle chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling. "So he's been after you, has he? Poor Etta, pursued by a sun priest offering to pleasure - "
"Every nook and cranny," Marietta interrupted dryly and Gabrielle tipped her head back with a throaty laugh.
Michelle O'Leary
#40. Oh my God you are despicable!" Etta snarled.
"Careful, madam, blasphemy is still a sin-"
Even if Nicholas had been the gambling sort, he never would have wagered a single coin on her next words being "Then I guess I'll see you in hell!
Alexandra Bracken
#41. Etta gave Will a small, knowing smile. Will, sometimes you have to love people for who they are, not who you want them to be.
Deanna Lynn Sletten
#42. I've gone through so much in my life. I should have been dead a long time ago, but I am still here, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.
Etta James
#43. I don't care who's playing. Even if it's my favorite artist, I'm probably not gonna go and see him.
Etta James
#44. I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.
Etta James
#45. To me, country music is like the blues, but it's something very hip and - I don't want to say commercial - but it's very worldly and good listening.
Etta James
#46. She set her shoulders back, meeting his gaze with a challenge. "You call that a kiss?" One corner of his mouth quirks up. "We haven't the time for a proper one, pirate. Now tell me, where precisely are we?
Alexandra Bracken
#47. What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.
Etta James
#48. The two things you can't fake are good food and good music
Etta James
#49. I'm not a braggart, but when I was a little girl people used to come from all over Hollywood to hear me sing.
Etta James
#50. I was a sloppy kid, wanted to be just wild.
Etta James
#51. For the longest time, I saw them as the end of my journey, but now I thing they were always meant to represent the beginning of yours.
Alexandra Bracken
#52. I sing the songs that people need to hear.
Etta James
#53. When I sing for myself, I probably sing for anyone who has any kind of hurt, any kind of bad feelings, good feelings, ups and downs, highs and lows, that kind of thing.
Etta James
#54. I was originally like a punker, know what I mean, like the punks are today, I'd spit in a minute.
Etta James
#55. When I'm performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I'm that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn't wait to be smokin' a cigarette, you know?
Etta James
#56. I've learned to live with rage. In some ways, it's my rage that keeps me going. Without it, I would have been whipped long ago. With it, I got a lot more songs to sing.
Etta James
#57. When I'm singing the blues, I'm singing life.
Etta James
#58. Free the fire fluttering inside her rib cage. Work her muscles, the bow, the violin, until she played herself to ash and embers and left the rest of the world behind to smolder.
Alexandra Bracken
#59. See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.
Etta James
#60. Even as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude.
Etta James
#61. That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.
Etta James
#62. I'm not starry eyed, and I'm not money crazy.
Etta James
#63. Once you lose the weight, you're really anxious to eat healthy.
Etta James
#64. And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.
Etta James
#65. Nicholas felt a rueful smile spread across his face. And a curse be on him for it, because now he knew her. She'd shown him her mind, and she'd opened up her heart, and now he knew the taste of her tears. And he was wrecked.
Alexandra Bracken
#66. The only time that I am really truly happy - when I feel at my best - is when I'm on the stage.
Etta James
#67. A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.
Etta James
#68. His presence was larger-than-life, bigger even than his physical body.
Alexandra Bracken
#69. My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.
Etta James
#70. You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.
Etta James
#71. My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!
Etta James
#72. It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them.
Etta James
#73. It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.
Etta James
#74. I am so happy that I am alive and can walk.
Etta James
#75. When I look out at the people and they look at me and they're smiling, then I know that I'm loved. That is the time when I have no worries, no problems.
Etta James
#76. Bobby Womack is always very real, both with his music and as a person.
Etta James
#77. This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.
Etta James
#78. Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.
Etta James
#79. In some ways, it's my rage that keeps me going,
Etta James
#80. realised where it was in the room he was looking and what it
Etta Stark
#81. At last my love has come along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song.
Etta James
#82. But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage.
Etta James
#83. My mother always wanted me to be glamorous. When I thought about that, it really fired me up, and once I lost all those pounds, I started to feel really good about myself.
Etta James
#84. I really turned into, you know, the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother, you know what I mean, and I had a place to stay.
Etta James
#85. I want a Sunday kind of love
A love to last past Saturday night
And I'd like to know it's more than love at first sight
Etta James
#86. A few years ago, I thought, I'll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.
Etta James
#87. It's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises.
Alexandra Bracken
#88. My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it.
Etta James
#89. Sugar got her beauty from her mama, was Theo's first impression, but this woman did not strike him as having a heart of gold. She looked rich and mean, the opposite of his own mother, and he felt proud that Sugar had turned out the way she had despite that.
Sarah-Kate Lynch
#90. The music was thunder and joy. Lightning bolts of happiness and praise, foot-stomping, dance-shouting, good-feeling singing from the soul.
Etta James
#91. All the things I used to like - cookies, ice cream, gumbo - I don't like anymore.
Etta James
#94. I'm not a bourgeois person, never will be.
Etta James
#95. I like to shop, but I don't like to go out to dances.
Etta James
#96. Half the men worship at her feet; the other half have already proposed marriage, including young Jack, who has sworn to his dear 'miss' that he'll be true if she'll only wait a few more years for him.
Alexandra Bracken
#97. Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.
Etta James
#98. My mother always wanted me to be a jazz singer, but I always wanted to be raunchy,
Etta James
#99. Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place, which is different than me singing the blues, where I can sing, 'Oh, baby,' if there's a pause in the melody. With jazz, you better leave that space open, or put in something real cool.
Etta James
#100. Johnny Guitar ... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together. I would hear him sing every night.
Etta James
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