There’s nothing like living a long time to create a depth and soulfulness in your music.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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’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...

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.

When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it – why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the ’90s – ‘Nick of...

I was always drawn to the blues. Alberta Hunter at the Cookery was a life-changing experience. I only wanted to get enriched as a performer as I got older, to have an audience which got...

Thank God for Occupy and thank God for ‘The Daily Show,’ Colbert and the rising up that’s going on around the world.

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

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...

I’m happy to say that at 62, I think I’ve reached that point where stuff doesn’t bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that...

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...

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.

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

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.

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...

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

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...

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. People write me letters...

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.

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music,...

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...

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...

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

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...

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

‘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...

I’m certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who’ve ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how...

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

My love was Bob Dylan, but as I got older I realized a good ballad was a good ballad.

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

Religion is for those who are scared of hell, and spirituality is for those who have been there.

Nobody taught me to play bottleneck. I just saw it and taught myself. I got an old bottle and steamed the label off, put it on the wrong finger, I basically did everything wrong until...

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...

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...

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.

People say, ‘Gee, you don’t really do political music.’ Well, I sing a lot of songs about how men and women and lovers treat each other, and none of us want to be talked down...

I’m not that beautiful, and I don’t want to be a pop star.

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

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...

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,...

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.

Sometimes I don’t go into the studio for quite a while because I haven’t found enough good songs. They have to have a certain caliber and connect with me because I’m going to be playing...

I do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder… So yeah, that’s pretty profound, when you’re not expecting it, you didn’t particularly believe in it and then...

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.