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.
BONNIE RAITTI’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.
More Bonnie Raitt Quotes
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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.
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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.
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You don’t have to look a certain way to have a hit record.
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The fact is that this conversation is going on at every level at every age, we’re all going, “God, what a jerk I’ve been,” “How could I have married that guy?” or “How could I have done this or that?” With time, this is the gift of being older, that you get to look back and say, “It wasn’t all about them.”
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The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.
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The anti-nuke movement has important and far-reaching implications for grassroots organizing.
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Nobody went out to pasture, and a lot of people are doing their best work. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Sting are at the top of their game.
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Leading a band and producing yourself and picking cool tunes and putting a show together takes a lot of thought, and a certain amount of courage.
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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.
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I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.
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My love was Bob Dylan, but as I got older I realized a good ballad was a good ballad.
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Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.
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I’m happy to have been a positive influence.
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I can’t make you love me if you don’t, You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t.
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The women’s movement resurgence of standing up for so many things that were kind of sleepy there for a decade or so, there’s been a reawakening and I think the consciousness movement in general is dovetailing with a lot of recovery and self-empowerment.
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I don’t think there’s ever been any music quite like what we came up with.
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I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is.
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Im happy to say that at 62, I think Ive reached that point where stuff doesnt bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up.
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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.
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I’ll close my eyes, so I won’t see, all of the love that you don’t feel for me.
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The fifth member of my band is my non-profit work.
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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.
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Whatever role we were in our family of birth, we take on this persona and in your 20s and 30s in particular, you end up thinking that’s you and that isn’t necessarily you.
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I have a really full life, both within music and outside it.
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With slide guitar, you’re just hanging this piece of glass on your hand. It’s a really beautiful instrument in that it’s so responsive, you’re just slipping your hand back and forth.
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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.
BONNIE RAITT