Linda Perry

“I have to meet everybody I work with before I work with them. Before I say yes, I have to meet them, and then I take it from there. I don't care if you've had the best record or the worst. That doesn't matter to me. I don't care about that stuff.”

“I've lived out in a park sleeping on the grass with no place to go; I've not eaten. I've been there.”

“I was scared of failure, of being a one-hit wonder, never being able to write another song again, never being able to sing again. Maybe everything that I think I am and who I want to be never will happen.”

“I nurture people's talents because, at the end of it, that's what they're left with. They're left with themselves.”

“I love writing songs, but I don't want to write the songs everyone else is asking me to write.”

“A lot of people call me a 'machine,' and I don't think a lot of men or women operate the way I do.”

“I love Pink, and I love Christina Aguilera. Something about Christina always inspires me to do things that are really different.”

“To give is one of the greatest gifts one could ever receive.”

“'American Idol' is a machine. It's a machine that's making a lot of money, that's selling a lot of product. It's 'American Marketing.'”

“I feel that when I listen to music - not that it's bad - it's not emotional. It has a gimmick to it. It's selling something: the artist, the producer, something. The emotional capacity is very small, for the listener as well.”

“I don't care if I go broke. I don't care about all that stuff. I just want to know that I did everything I wanted to do.”

“I've been touching instruments since the day I was born. My mother is Brazilian, and she listens to Brazilian music. My father was a musician, and I've seen pictures of him when he was in a band playing guitar and piano. He loved country music, Frank Sinatra, and stuff like that.”

“You kind of have to have no ego to be a producer and a songwriter.”

“I'm able to switch gears at any moment.”

“I was raised in a time when parents brought out belts, and you got tough love.”

“There's nothing you could do to me, nothing you could take away from me that would make me feel like I wasn't going to be all right.”

“I'm not a children's songwriter. I'm not in that world.”

“I want to be so giving and collaborative, but my best songs were written on my own.”

“Music comes from inside. It's not a style. It's just passion.”

“I don't feel the need to be in the spotlight whatsoever.”