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.
BONNIE RAITTI grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.
More Bonnie Raitt Quotes
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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.
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One of the biggest obstacles I’ve overcome in my life was thinking I didn’t deserve to be successful.
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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.
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We can choose, you know, we ain’t no amoeba.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are a lot of people that never get their stories told.
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In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident – in the way that only 17-year-olds are – that I could change the world.
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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.
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When they were putting oil rigs up and down the California coast, the whole issue of safe energy and the addiction to fossil fuels really came into focus.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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The generation I grew up in was the beginning of “stand up for yourself,” whether being a singer-songwriter or a feminist. In my college years, the feminist movement was really coming to fore, so we wouldn’t have put up with guys treating us less than equal.
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Even if the writers don’t get paid enough most of the time, unfortunately – but there’s never been a more amazing flow of information on all of the issues. I would love to see a revival of what we had against the war in the ’60s – we could do thes
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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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There would be no rock and roll or rhythm and blues without Leo Fenders’ contribution … the tone is everything
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I’m happy to have been a positive influence.
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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.
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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.
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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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With the new ways of getting music out, you don’t need a label if you’re a legacy artist.
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Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.
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You know, a lot of people feel that sobriety is about just stopping using whatever it was that you appeared to be addicted to, but it really has to do with a way of looking at your life and taking accountability.
BONNIE RAITT