Bonnie Raitt famous quotes

I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Kids #People #Incredibles

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#God #Spiritual #People

I would rather feel things in extreme than not at all.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Feelings #Feels #Extremes

I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Black And White #Men #Saws

Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet - nobody taxes the sun yet.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Energy #Lasts #Sun

We can choose, you know, we ain't no amoeba.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Adages

There's nothing like living a long time to create a depth and soulfulness in your music.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Long #Depth #Soulfulness

Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Waste

I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Religious #Political #Calling

The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Style #Made #Resources

I've been lucky enough that I can gather all sorts of experiences and find inspiration by traveling around and by spending time with people I admire.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Inspiration #People #Lucky

People come up to me all the time who saw Dad in 'Oklahoma!' or 'Pajama Game,' and they say they'll never forget it.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Dad #Oklahoma #Games

Since I was 20 years old, I've been a kind of corporation. I'd wake up in the morning and my job was to be 'Bonnie Raitt' in capital letters.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Morning #Jobs #Years

Thank God for Occupy and thank God for 'The Daily Show,' Colbert and the rising up that's going on around the world.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Rising Up #Thank God #World

Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Appreciation #Strong #Real

It's so thrilling. And not just the music. The Internet is changing the future of fund-raising. I'm thrilled by the potential.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Internet #Fund

Im happy to say that at 62, I think Ive reached that point where stuff doesnt bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that Ive had, and losing so many of the great artists that I was close to. They taught me how to see it with a grain of salt and a lot of humor and perspective.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Gratitude #Loss #Artist

The arts can be a great way to bring people together. I don't preach from the stage. I try to stay positive on solutions.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Art #People #Stay Positive

My love was Bob Dylan, but as I got older I realized a good ballad was a good ballad.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Bob #Ballads #Dylan

It is still a surprise when people tell me that I've had an influence on them, particularly when it's someone I really respect.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#People #Influence #Surprise

In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Age #Jazz

Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#School #Guitar #Childhood

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Music #Real #Thinking

I've watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would happen with me.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Afterlife #Get Better #Age

AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' is the greatest meshing of vocal, guitar, and content I've ever heard. That's what I aspire to.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Guitar #Hell #Heard

I don't think there's ever been any music quite like what we came up with.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Thinking #Advertising Agencies

I finally learned to accept that I can't make radio play blues any more than I could get Reagan out of the White House.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Play #White #House

I have a really full life, both within music and outside it.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Full Life

I think people must wonder how a white girl like me became a blues guitarist. The truth is, I never intended to do this for a living.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Girl #Thinking #White

I like to think I get better with age, but maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Heart #Thinking #Get Better

I made my first album, and I guess it wasn't a fluke, because now I'm on my 16th.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Albums #Firsts #Flukes

I'm not that beautiful, and I don't want to be a pop star.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Beautiful #Stars #Want

I think I'm a living embodiment of, 'Don't try to push me around or squash me,' whether its how I talk to a record label or in my relationships.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Thinking #Squash #Trying

There's something about the Strat's shape that is at once masculine and feminine
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Music #Shapes #Feminine

There would be no rock and roll or rhythm and blues without Leo Fenders' contribution ... the tone is everything
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Music #Rocks #Rock And Roll

The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Art #Cutting #Race

It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Jobs #Together #Deregulation

Nobody went out to pasture, and a lot of people are doing their best work. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Sting are at the top of their game. I mean, Tony Bennett is the coolest guy I ever met! We have to figure out how to break out of this age ghetto.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Mean #Ghetto #Games

I can't make you love me if you don't, You can't make your heart feel something it won't.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Heart #Feels

We did a two month tour with Taj Mahal that was really healing and cathartic and a good distraction after my brother passed away. Then I knew I wanted to take a year off, and it was really nice to have that chance to fall apart.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Brother #Nice #Fall

We can live in fear or act out of hope.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Inspirational

Ugly ducklings don't turn into swans and glide off down the lake. Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Games #Lakes #Swans

I'll close my eyes, so I won't see, all of the love that you don't feel for me.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Eye #Explanation #Feels

Sometimes I'm more true when I'm up onstage than I'm able to be in my regular life. It's not as exciting to be at home, but I've got to learn how to make that work, and then I will be an ordinary woman.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Home #Ordinary #Able

I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I'm in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Play #People #Musician

How unthinkable that, in a country of such bursting plenty, so many people are facing ongoing hunger and poverty. If we are truly each other's keepers, let's support school lunches, food stamps, neighborhood garden projects, and so many other wonderful programs working to put an end to this cruel and needless blight once and for all.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Country #School #Garden

There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Girl #Political #Guy

With the new ways of getting music out, you don't need a label if you're a legacy artist.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Artist #Legacy #Needs

A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Political #Done #Corny

Distribution has really changed. You can make a record with a laptop in the morning and have it up on YouTube in the afternoon and be a star overnight. The talent on YouTube is incredible, and it can spread like wildfire. The downside is that it's very hard to convince the younger generation that they should pay for music.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Morning #Stars #Generations

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Mean #Artist #Rocks

Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Song #People #Gigs

I didn't have to be a pop singer with a certain look. When I started, there was really a revolution in natural artists with blues and folk artists crossing over; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to get started.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Artist #Revolution #Looks

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Jobs #Believe #Responsibility

I was offered to take over for Reba in 'Annie Get Your Gun,' but it wasn't where I wanted to be. I think my fans would be upset if I confined my shows to one city for a long period of time.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Thinking #Gun #Cities

'I Will Not Be Broken' has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event... it's going to inform the richness that you sing from... The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Healing #Thinking #Broken

I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#School #Guitar #People

I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Jobs #Writing #Artist

In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident - in the way that only 17-year-olds are - that I could change the world. My major was African Studies, and my plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Creating #Government #Years

One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Successful #Thinking #Years

Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Song #Rocks #Guitar

Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice - those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have more than you need, then you share it with people who don't.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Struggle #Native American #Ideas

The anti-nuke movement has important and far-reaching implications for grassroots organizing. It can unite kids and musicians, everybody, whether they're leftist or rightist, or radical, or Republican, because energy is energy. But in fact, it is a real political struggle - it shows people that it's big business against the people.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Real #Struggle #Kids

The fifth member of my band is my non-profit work.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Band #Profit #Members