Top 60 Bonnie Raitt Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 would rather feel things in extreme than not at all.

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

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’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.

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 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.

I tend to be freer on the piano. I never took guitar lessons, so my reach exceeds my grasp – what I hear in my head I don’t always know how to play. But I love to play over something else. I’m not a self-starter. I get kind of bored with the same three folk chords that I know.

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

What – of all the incredible duets that I’ve been able to sing, you know, John Raitt was still the one that I just shook in my boots just standing next to him. I loved him so much.

Superficial pop will always exist – there’ve always been Fabians – but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there’s a revolution going on in music.

I do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder… So yeah, that’s pretty profound, when you’re not expecting it, you didn’t particularly believe in it and then it just sort of happens too often to ignore.

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.

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.

People say, ‘Gee, you don’t really do political music.’ Well, I sing a lot of songs about how men and women and lovers treat each other, and none of us want to be talked down to or belittled or ignored or disrespected… So I’m proud to be a feminist.

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 do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder… So yeah, that’s pretty profound, when you’re not expecting it, you didn’t particularly believe in it and then it just sort of happens too often to ignore.

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.

Sometimes I don’t go into the studio for quite a while because I haven’t found enough good songs. They have to have a certain caliber and connect with me because I’m going to be playing them for the rest of my life. I start off with a circle of friends whose songs I love anyway.

I’m really careful about not slamming my politics home in my shows, but I don’t try to hide, either. 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.

I’m really careful about not slamming my politics home in my shows, but I don’t try to hide, either. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Superficial pop will always exist – there’ve always been Fabians – but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there’s a revolution going on in music.

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

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 think it’s our job to write about what we’re going through at the moment, and being 41, I’m not going to write about the same things I wrote about at 20. I don’t think artists should be farmed out to pasture just because they’re in rock n’ roll.

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.

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.

When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it – why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the ’90s – ‘Nick of Time’ and other songs I was surprised I came up with – it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say.

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t think there’s ever been any music quite like what we came up with.

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.