Bonnie Raitt Quotes

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.

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.

Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste.

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

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

It's always enjoyable to listen to a friend's work, but if it doesn't resonate with you, then you can just appreciate it and it inspires you in its own way.

We can live in fear or act out of hope.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I just want to be as good a person as I can be.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought I had to live that partying lifestyle in order to be authentic, but in fact if you keep it up too long, all you're going to be is sloppy or dead.

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

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.