Bonnie Raitt Quotes

I love Lauryn Hill, Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple. People like that. People you can really connect to on the most basic human level.

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.'

The audience, they're not professionals. They just love music. It isn't necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

I feel like a lot of people can relate to my music.

For me, I feel like the most important part of music is the storytelling behind it, and that's my favorite; that's what makes my favorite artists my favorite artists, having the story that I relate to the most and that helps me the most.

Looking at the original lyrics [of "A Song For You" ] as I was preparing it, I thought, "Wow! I feel like it was written for me." That's what a great song does. You don't have to do a lot of homework. You can just say the words and it springs to life.

The song that we hear with our ears is only the song that is sung in our hearts.

Jesus, music has always been my first love. I use music in my work because it's the fastest way to an emotional place. You hear a song, and that memory comes right back-- you're there... Making music is immediate, and it's all about you. If you're playing guitar, the feeling comes through-- the way you bend the note, the intensity with which you hit the strings. With making films, although it's real emotion, it's false emotion. You're lying.

I've always been shy, but every time that I sing or I perform, when music comes out of me, it is the only thing I can relate to, it's the only thing I can give.

It's a powerful thing hearing your friend on a very beautiful song.

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, killing me softly with his song.

In music in general, you're always getting a lot of information, buts it's most important to have honest communication. It's always important to understand that we can do so much individually if we connect with one another and have honest conversations. As scary as it is, it can be very liberating. Staying connected to the people you love and staying connected to the things that really matter has been my biggest lesson.

Beyond hoping that someone will like one of my songs, I don't think about how a song will be received. I just hope that, when somebody hears one of my songs, they'll want to hear it again.

As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar...Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel...This song ("Until It's Time for You To Go") popped into my head while I was falling in love with someone I knew couldn't stay with me. The words are about honesty and freedom inside the heart.

I just sing the song and I sing it with conviction, meaning and I get into the mood of every song I do no matter how much time I have in between.

Life is not logic, life is not philosophy. Life is a dance, a song, a celebration! It is more like love and less like logic.

I love music. For me, music is morning coffee. It's mood medicine. It's pure magic. A good song is like a good meal-I just want to inhale it and then share a bite with someone else.

People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

Sometimes I do a Dylan song and it seems to fit me so right that I figure maybe I wrote it. Dylan didn’t always do it for me as a singer, not in the early days, but then I started listening to the lyrics. That sold me.

I still perform because it's a necessity for my innards. And those songs, some of those songs, I have sung, I don't know how many thousands of times. And I promise you, every single solitary night, they're new to me. They are brand-new to me that night.

Music is also one of the great heart openers. Sometimes, you hear the lyrics of a song and you dance, laugh, smile, or perhaps even cry.

I can't' really sing a song unless I really connect with the lyrics.

[Songs] have to be a part of you. They have to be in your DNA. That's how I approached it.

I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.