Etta James Quotes

We're all scared most of the time. Life would be lifeless if we weren't. Be scared, and then jump into that fear. Again and again. Just remember to hold on to yourself while you do it.

You told me, once, to just remember to breathe. As long as you can do that, you're doing something good.

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.

Go do whatever, wherever. Go do it alone, and now, because you want to and you're allowed to and you can.

We have good days and bad days. You told me, once, to just remember to breathe. As long as you can do that, you’re doing something Good, you said. Getting rid of the old, and letting in the new. And, therefore, moving forward. Making progress. That’s all you have to do to move forward, sometimes, you said, just breathe. So don’t worry, Etta, if nothing else, I am still breathing.

I am drawing a dotted line across our globe, starting from home here, out along what I imagine is your path.

We're all scared most of the time. Life would be lifeless if we weren't.

If we’re doing we’re living and if we’re living we’re winning, right?

I keep your photo in the pocket on the side without the gun. For balance.

I have made you some things, for when you get back. I understand now, all the baking you sent me, stale and crumbled in brown paper and rough twine. Now you’re away and I am here. So I will make and make until you get back to remind you, and myself: there are reasons to come home.

In that night’s dream Etta was swimming or dancing, she couldn’t decide which, but it didn’t matter because they were, really, the same thing, only in swimming the water was your partner, all around, ready, following, light and easy and heavy and comforting and there in your arms and you in its arms and if you opened your mouth to sing along to the music it would rush in and tell you its secrets and taste like wine.

It happened on one of those what we called "Sunday Kind of Love" days, after the song by Etta James. We loved the lyrics, because, as she sings, it was the kind of love that lasted past Saturday night. That felt right to us.

I had hooked up my iPod to the speakers. The air was filled with the raw, sexy purr of Etta James. "The thing that's great about the blues," I told Luke, pausing to sip from my glass of wine, "is that it's about feeling, loving, wanting without the brakes on. No one's brave enough to live that way. Except maybe musicians.

The band in the ballroom announced the cover of a special request, and after a pause, the woman's voice sang out the breathy first line of Etta James's "At Last." Chairs barked as guests rose to greet the champion of all wedding songs, the one that always brought indifferent or fighting or estranged couples to the dance floor for momentary reconciliation.

The pain bursts through Etta like caffeine,

Toxemia. A word that starts so harsh and ends so gently.

Etta, it could be everything, it could be nothing, what you’re making up. You shouldn’t let that bother you.

The students whipped their heads back to look at her; a blaspheming teacher was as exciting as a fight.

You can never stop being a mother. Never, never, never.

He put his hands on her arms, above the elbow, held them in, and kissed her mouth and kissed her and kissed so that neither of them could breathe and neither of them wanted to.

People could say things about Owen. They could. But they don’t. We don’t. Words are strong. The strongest. Worse than bruises on

I came up in segregated West Baltimore. I understood black as a culture—as Etta James, jumping the broom, the Electric Slide. I understood the history and the politics, the debilitating effects of racism. But I did not understand blackness as a minority until I was an “only,” until I was a young man walking into rooms filled with people who did not look like me. In many ways, segregation protected me—to this day, I’ve never been called a nigger by a white person, and although I know that racism is part of why I define myself as black, I don’t feel that way, any more than I feel that the two oceans define me as American. But in other ways, segregation left me unprepared for the discovery that my world was not the world.

It took them longer, a week or so, to notice the hole in their language that this new word had made. To grasp that there was no term for a parent without a child, a sister without a sister.

A remembrance of what’s impossible to remember. A sixth sense I’ve long guessed is special to those who are born with leftover matter ferrying them rearward. We’re the type who ask too many questions—an irritating amount, really. But who ask without claim or exigency. The want is the want and it goes on like that. My prelude was a waltz Dulcie loved to dance. She and Felix then, are like Etta James in concert: potential energy.

The radio was a beautiful thing. It was hodgepodge and patched up on the outside, but on the inside it was filled with voices, filled with people and music and ideas from away, from far away. Otto took a breath and turned it on.

Maybe Jane was right. Maybe he was wrong to have filled her head with tales of Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker, let alone take her to see Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Tina Turner and the Ikettes. Maybe it wasn’t right to wake up to Chico Hamilton, Lee Morgan, Charlie Parker, and Art Blakey in the morning. Watch the sunset with Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, and Little Willie John. But Greer didn’t know what else to offer that was beautiful and colored and alive, all at the same time.

We fit together better than James with Etta.

P.S. I know you have gone to see the water, and you should see it, Etta, you should, but, in case there are other reasons you’ve left, in case there are things you have discovered or undiscovered that you didn’t want to tell me in person, in that case, you can always tell me here. Tell me here and we can never mention it outside of paper and ink (or pencil).

Kneading, Otto thought as he moved his hands up and down in the dough, was the best part. It was the connection point, between you and the food.

go do whatever, wherever. Go do it alone, and now, because you want to and you’re allowed to and you can.

Otto's train was due in seven minutes. Etta stood on the platform and waited for the wind it would bring.

Chickens, children, they're all the same.

you’re doing something Good, you said. Getting rid of the old and letting in the new. And, therefore, moving forward. Making progress. That’s all you have to do to move forward, sometimes, you said, just breathe. So don’t worry, Etta, if nothing else, I am still breathing. You

He was now the most singularly handsome man I’d ever seen, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was trying to get me drunk. Brain was getting a bit fuzzy. Heart was beginning to sing Etta James songs. “Are

I clicked the obituary, my heart pounding. " 'Alice Roussard passed away on February 8, 2008. She was 87,' " I read. Caterina tapped her fingers against the desk. "Bingo." " 'Alice is survived by her husband Benjamin and three daughters,' " I continued. " 'Lisette Greenfeld of Kansas City, KS; Vi Lipniki of Poughkeepsie, NY; and Rosaline Warner of Saint Louis, MO.' " "Ha! No wonder you were having trouble getting anywhere with Roussard. Benjamin had three daughters, all of whom changed their names." "Well, now we've got them." "Saint Louis is within driving distance, Etta. If we found a number or e-mail for Rosaline..." "It's certainly worth a try," I said, clicking to a new browser window. I typed in Rosaline Warner's name and hit Enter. "Would you look at that," Cat said when we reviewed the results. I couldn't help but chuckle as well. Link after link featured Rosaline Warner, the James Beard Award-winning pastry chef and proprietress of the Feisty Baguette. "Genetics," I said. "They'll getcha every time.

At Last” by Etta James

That unwavering devotion has always intrigued me. People commit to an artist’s music in a way they won’t to a relationship or a career. It’s a constant in their lives, no matter what else changes. My earliest memories are of my parents dancing in the kitchen to Etta James. My mom listened to those same songs my senior year of high school, over a decade after they got divorced.

So don't worry, Etta, if nothing else, I am still breathing.

I don’t know why I love the open spaces in the Southwest or Grand Central Terminal or the fading Atomic Age Googie architecture you see sometimes when driving. I don’t know why merely glimpsing the Statue of Liberty brings tears to my eyes, or why a single phrase on an Etta James or Patsy Cline record does what it does to me. It just does. I have spoken to other immigrants about this, and I have noticed that there is generally a satisfactory explanation — religious freedom, the chance at self-expression, the country’s size — and then there is the wistful stuff that moistens the eyes. Show me a picture of two canyons, and the fact that one of them is American will make all the difference. Just because it is American. Is this so peculiar? Perhaps.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to if we lived five times that long, and having helped many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.