Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Ugly ducklings don't turn into swans and glide off down the lake. Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.
I don't need any drug to show me Heaven And I sure know how to spend plenty of time cleaning Hell But I'm missin' that feeling of falling.
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.
Since I was 20 years old, I've been a kind of corporation. I'd wake up in the morning and my job was to be 'Bonnie Raitt' in capital letters.
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.
It's very personal in California to live within hours, and sometimes just a few miles, of earthquake faults when nuclear plants were being built.
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.
Some people are caricatures of themselves, and some people keep people coming back and keep themselves growing. Otherwise, the fans would get bored.
I was raised with the blessing of being involved with peace and social justice, and the environmental movement. I have my parents to thank for that.
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.
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.
It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.
How I measure success is getting to make another record and being able to the come back to the same town and play again cause you sold out the last time.
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.
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.
It's always enjoyable to listen to a friend's work, but if it doesn't resonate with you, then you can just appreciate it and it inspires you in its own way.
When you love a song so much you have to sing, you know how you feel - it releases something in you that resonates as true, whether it's James Brown or Joni Mitchell.
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.
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 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.
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.
What - of all the incredible duets that I've been able to sing, you know, John Raitt was still the one that I just shook in my boots just standing next to him. I loved him so much.
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.
I'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.
The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.
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.
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.
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.
A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.
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.
Superficial pop will always exist - there've always been Fabians - but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there's a revolution going on in music.
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.
At 3 A.M., I'm still up watching videos of jazz heroes I never saw live. It's so thrilling. And not just the music. The Internet is changing the future of fund-raising. I'm thrilled by the potential.
Sometimes I'm more true when I'm up onstage than I'm able to be in my regular life. It's not as exciting to be at home, but I've got to learn how to make that work, and then I will be an ordinary woman.
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.
Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more.
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.
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.
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.
I'm glad people think I'm a badass. I'm a rock and roller, and I'm an R&B and a blueswoman. I don't do fairy music, although I love Celtic music and sensitive music. There's a balance between ballads and kick-ass songs.
My career is based on the slow build of an audience based on putting on a good show live and putting out a record every couple of years. I was already doing really well in terms of my goals, to keep my fans coming back.
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.
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.
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.
Between the redwoods, growing up and enjoying nature, camping on almost every vacation, and getting to go to summer camp in the Adirondacks, it was really very apparent to me that we had to preserve what we had on the earth.
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.
Part of the reason I had such a drive to be an activist, and support other activists, is because I was raised Quaker and my parents kept us very much informed and involved as kids in civil rights and the conservation movement.
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.
'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.
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.