Bonnie Raitt Quotes - Page 4

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

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.

Maybe the idea of me is more powerful than I perceive myself being.

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'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.

I don't know that I'm unique in that people relate to my music, but I would hope people would say that I'm honest and that I do the best work I can possibly do instead of coasting.

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

You create the happiness and the balance that you have, and your own power. This is one thing that I know to be true.

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

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

I would like to inspire a lot of people to be active and give back.

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 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.

When it's a funky uptempo song, you're basically having the same kind of release you would have when you have sex, only it lasts longer. Whether you're playing it on the guitar or on the dance floor, you're in that moment.

I'm happy to have been a positive influence.

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.

Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music.

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

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.

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

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.