Bonnie Raitt Quotes

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Bonnie Raitt

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 8, 1949

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

I'm happy to say that at 62, I think I've reached that point where stuff doesn't bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that I've 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.

Bonnie Raitt

I was always drawn to the blues. Alberta Hunter at the Cookery was a life-changing experience. I only wanted to get enriched as a performer as I got older, to have an audience which got older, too, and would come to see me when I'm 80.

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt