Bonnie Raitt
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
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

The world I live in is benefiting from things like satellite radio. 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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
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
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

Not being a natural songwriter... for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

'I Will Not Be Broken' has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event... it's going to inform the richness that you sing from... The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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.

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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

Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt

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