Best 102 quotes of Bonnie Raitt on MyQuotes

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.

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.

Between the redwoods, growing up and enjoying nature, camping on almost every vacation, and getting to go to summer camp in the Adirondacks, it was really very apparent to me that we had to preserve what we had on the earth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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 finally learned to accept that I can't make radio play blues any more than I could get Reagan out of the White House.

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

I have been really heartened by how much coverage there has been about inequality of pay across the board, between the entertainment industry and almost every industry worldwide. And just the problem of young women not getting an education, not being able to have an equal position in the cultures all around the world.

I hope I'm an integrous person who cleans up their messes when I've been a jerk.

I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I'm in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them.

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 learned by experience that you can change your circumstance. It's as simple as the serenity prayer; it's a very, very real thing.

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

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

I'm glad I get singled out for my slide guitar-playing, which isn't that difficult to do. I didn't take guitar lessons, but I just love the way it sounds, almost like the human voice.

I'm glad people think I'm a badass. I'm a rock and roller, and I'm an R&B and a blueswoman. I don't do fairy music, although I love Celtic music and sensitive music. There's a balance between ballads and kick-ass songs.

I'm happy to have been a positive influence.

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.

I'm not that beautiful, and I don't want to be a pop star.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I speak my mind and come from a place of conscience, as well as have fun as a musician.

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

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 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.

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

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 is still a surprise when people tell me that I've had an influence on them, particularly when it's someone I really respect.

It's a lot harder to be clear-headed, but the good stuff is when you start realizing who's really you.

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.

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 very personal in California to live within hours, and sometimes just a few miles, of earthquake faults when nuclear plants were being built.

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

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.