Bonnie Raitt Quotes

You create the happiness and the balance that you have, and your own power. This is one thing that I know to be true.

When you love a song so much you have to sing, you know how you feel - it releases something in you that resonates as true, whether it's James Brown or Joni Mitchell.

I would like to inspire a lot of people to be active and give back.

Really important issues are getting lost, so I can say I'm glad to be a citizen of the planet and do my part.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I was raised with the blessing of being involved with peace and social justice, and the environmental movement. I have my parents to thank for that.

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

I don't want to sound like a self-help book, but it really has been transformative for me to take a look at my relationships in a new way and see my part in them. Everybody's going through that.

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.

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

I can't make you love me, if you don't.

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.

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.

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.

I learned a lot about what it was like to have to use different hotels and not use the bathrooms, which made me more determined to be an activist.

I'm in a relationship, and I've been in one in a while, but all the people I've been with at various points - and I've had sequentially monogamous relationships my whole life - were all the right people at the right time.

Life is simple yet complex, in the complexity we realize everything is simple for we create our own happiness, our own sadness & our own destiny by not making a choice you have chosen so face life with courage and faith in yourself.

How I measure success is getting to make another record and being able to the come back to the same town and play again cause you sold out the last time.

Those of us with a microphone who are blessed with the gift of being in the public eye have a special opportunity to give voice to all those groups whose activism is sometimes ignored or put on the back pages with the the dumbing down of television and the tabloidization of journalism. As Ralph Nader called it, "sound barks," not even sound bites.

I don't want to discredit people's opinions of me, but you talk about the violin or the cello or lead guitar where you have to learn tons of chords, that's much more difficult.

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

The women's movement resurgence of standing up for so many things that were kind of sleepy there for a decade or so, there's been a reawakening and I think the consciousness movement in general is dovetailing with a lot of recovery and self-empowerment.

Leading a band and producing yourself and picking cool tunes and putting a show together takes a lot of thought, and a certain amount of courage. In my early twenties, if I wasn't getting good enough at it, then people would not come and see me. Anybody who has lasted this long - I hope we get better with age.

The one thing I know is that if you're not paying attention, it will come back to bite you.

I'm one of those people who just doesn't plan my personal life. I plan my professional life.

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.

My career is based on the slow build of an audience based on putting on a good show live and putting out a record every couple of years. I was already doing really well in terms of my goals, to keep my fans coming back.

I don't know that I'm unique in that people relate to my music, but I would hope people would say that I'm honest and that I do the best work I can possibly do instead of coasting.

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.

There's so many amazing articles coming out all the time and because of the internet circulating great writing - even if the writers don't get paid enough most of the time, unfortunately - but there's never been a more amazing flow of information on all of the issues. I would love to see a revival of what we had against the war in the '60s - we could do thes

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

The generation I grew up in was the beginning of "stand up for yourself," whether being a singer-songwriter or a feminist. In my college years, the feminist movement was really coming to fore, so we wouldn't have put up with guys treating us less than equal.

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

With slide guitar, you're just hanging this piece of glass on your hand. It's a really beautiful instrument in that it's so responsive, you're just slipping your hand back and forth.

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.

There's lots of flaws and frailties and cracks in the armor, and nobody wants to put themselves out there as some kind of Joan of Arc because none of us can live up to that, but I'm grateful to be a role model and be respected because I have a whole slew of people, men and women, that I feel the same way about.

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

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

We can live in fear or act out of hope.

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

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.

Maybe the idea of me is more powerful than I perceive myself being.