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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.
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
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I'm just glad that I'm the musical equivalent of a character actress, because blues singers can keep singing and having an audience at 35, and someone like Madonna's gonna have to find something else to do, 'cos I don't care how pointy those bras are that she wears, they're still gonna look a little odd when she's 55!
Bonnie Raitt -
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.
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 -
In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident - in the way that only 17-year-olds are - that I could change the world. My major was African Studies, and my plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism.
Bonnie Raitt -
I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.
Bonnie Raitt -
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.
Bonnie Raitt
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I don't think there's ever been any music quite like what we came up with.
Bonnie Raitt -
The anti-nuke movement has important and far-reaching implications for grassroots organizing. It can unite kids and musicians, everybody, whether they're leftist or rightist, or radical, or Republican, because energy is energy. But in fact, it is a real political struggle - it shows people that it's big business against the people.
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 -
I made my first album, and I guess it wasn't a fluke, because now I'm on my 16th.
Bonnie Raitt -
I would rather feel things in extreme than not at all.
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
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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.
Bonnie Raitt -
The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.
Bonnie Raitt -
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.
Bonnie Raitt -
In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age.
Bonnie Raitt