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.

Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we're not just automatons learning how to work machines and do engineering and math and science. All of that's great, but you've got to build a whole person.

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 met some of the Blues legends early in my career who taught me another way. I didn't have anyone to tell me women didn't play bottleneck.

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.

Opening acts are hard, really hard. There's more politics involved than music, sometimes.

I call on the Australian Government to set out the conditions upon which they will provide a taxpayer funded backing for wholesale term funding for Australian deposit taking institutions. I call on the Government it make clear the conditions upon which taxpayer funds will be used in this way.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

Conservatives and companies condoned Rush Limbaugh's politics of personal destruction when it came to smearing elected officials. 'Fair game,' they said, even when crass and crude. That's just the way it is.