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.

I'm the same on stage as I am off stage. A lot of people who I admire - Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne - are not that different either. You hope that if you met them that they'd be as nice and well-rounded as they appear.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.