Bonnie Raitt Quotes

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.

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell.

Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

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

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.

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.

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

You know, a lot of people feel that sobriety is about just stopping using whatever it was that you appeared to be addicted to, but it really has to do with a way of looking at your life and taking accountability.

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

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.

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.

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

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age.

Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

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

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.

When they were putting oil rigs up and down the California coast, the whole issue of safe energy and the addiction to fossil fuels really came into focus.

There are so many people out there working with great grassroots and global and national organizations that are unsung heroes to me.

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

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.

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.

Part of the reason I had such a drive to be an activist, and support other activists, is because I was raised Quaker and my parents kept us very much informed and involved as kids in civil rights and the conservation movement.

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

The connection between toxicity and cancer and safe air and water and food, all of that was important all along, as were women's and human rights issues, but the nuke issue and the safe energy movement became really important to me in the mid-'70s.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I'm proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story - it's casting, editing, cinematography.

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.

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.

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.

I don't need any drug to show me Heaven And I sure know how to spend plenty of time cleaning Hell But I'm missin' that feeling of falling.

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.

The challenge of course is in sobriety and that's been the blessing, to realize, to take accountability for the ways that your own thinking impacts your happiness, and your serenity, and your ability to be a productive and a loving, giving member of your family and society.

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.

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

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.

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.

I don't know if I'm a heroine; I'm just somebody that can cheer the troops by singing to folks, and have receptions after the show, and tithe a dollar of every ticket sale for all kinds of different great charities and social action groups.

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.

You create the happiness and the balance that you have, and your own power.

This is one thing that I know to be true.

I don't go into any album with a concept or a deliberate direction. It's more letting the best music that really appeals to me at the time, the best songs that I find after many months and years of search and sifting through my collection, and asking radio people and journalists. It's really an ongoing search that's as much daunting as it is somewhat exciting.

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.

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.

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

One of the things that I'm glad about, though, is that regular people can relate to me.

I think that we have a unique opportunity as performers and artists to be kind of the town criers and also to get more people to listen, so that's a blessing and a responsibility that I take very seriously.