Top 445 Quotes & Sayings by Bruce Springsteen - Page 5

You've got to be able to hold a lot of contradictory ideas in your mind without going nuts. I feel like to do my job right, when I walk out on stage I've got to feel like it's the most important thing in the world. Also I've got to feel like, well, it's only rock and roll. Somehow you've got to believe both of those things.

Every rock song is some variation of 'Pull down your pants'

I was lucky I survived the motorcycle accident because I - bike went under the car. I flew out about 20 or 25 feet. I didn't have a helmet on. I hit my head on the pavement and knocked myself out, gave myself a brain concussion, screwed up my left leg. And I was - I was lucky then that I didn't get killed because I didn't have any protective clothing on whatsoever. And I took a pretty good beating. But, yeah, such was the nature of the day when the barber was called and Samson's locks were trimmed.

Most of the artists I know are crazy in one way or another. I think that's why you get into it. You're in pursuit of a certain sort of peace that's very, very, very difficult to come by.

I always write with an audience in mind. If I feel that [connection] coming back at me then I feel like I'm doing my job. That's why people come to my music - for some emotional experience or a perspective, either on their own lives, or on the world that they're living in.

[The Catholic religion] was something I carried with me, never forgot, brought into my music. And it's been in my music ever since.

Unions have been the only powerful and effective voice working people have ever had in the history of this country.

I've found that giving 100% to your job isn't the same as giving 100% of your life to your job. Very often when I thought I was giving 100% of my life to my job, I was simply obsessing over something.

With a chance to make it good somehow, hey, what else can we do now? Except roll down the window, and let the wind blow back your hair.

I was unrecognizable to myself; I saw my reflection in a window; I didn't know my own face.

cause down the shore everything's all right

Don't run back inside, darlin', you know just what I'm here for. So you're scared and you're thinkin' we ain't that young any more...Show a little faith! There's magic in the night. You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're all right.

The artists we love, they put their fingerprint on your imagination, and on your heart and your soul.

We said we'd walk together baby come what may.That come the twilight should we lose our way.If as we're walkin a hand should slip free,I'll wait for you And should I fall behind,Wait for me.

Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold We swore blood brothers against the wind I'm ready to grow young again

I think you can't demonize somebody that's on the other side of the political spectrum, or you can't generalize about them.

Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

It's hard to be a saint in the city.

They put a rifle in my hand, sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill the Yellow man.

I'm used to writing something, it becomes a record, it comes out. Then I go perform and I play it and I get this immediate feedback from the audience. So that's been the pattern of my life.

I couldn't worry about whether I`m gonna make it onstage or not. You can't. You just gotta do it. And if you do, you do, and if you don't, you don't, and then something else happens. That's the point of the live performance.

The songs themselves do broaden out as time passes and take on subtly different meanings, take on more meaning, I find.

When I was young I was very shy and that was my personality. I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety.

At night I wake up with my sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head.

I wanted to be the reasonable voice of revenge for what I'd seen [my father] life come to.

You're young and you're always in pursuit your young manhood. You're trying to figure out - what does that mean? What does - you know, there's a lot of pressure on young men to sort that out. And, you know, we tend to gravitate towards one-dimensional iconography as far as what it means to be a fully grown man. And you can get lost in so much of it out there.

All I try to do is write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.

I never start with a political point of view. I believe that your politics are emotionally and psychologically determined by your early experiences.

I think that it's a natural thing for parents to look for reflections of themselves in their children and feel a certain pride there. So if your child is very, very different, or perhaps if he's very, very similar, it makes you uncomfortable.

My dad had a very difficult life, a hard struggle all the time at work. I've always felt like I'm seeking his revenge.

I realized the only time I felt complete and peaceful was while I was playing or shortly afterwards, even though it was in front of thousands of other people, which most people wouldn't consider to be a safe place.

For the ones who had a notion, A notion deep inside, That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these badlands

You can't start a fire Worrying 'bout your little world falling apart This gun's for hire Even if we're just dancing in the dark

The Catholic religion at the time was much darker and more mysterious. The entire mass was in Latin. The church was - if you go to my church now, it's incredibly bright inside. But at - when I was young, it was very dark inside. And it was just the difference in the way that they've painted it since I've gone there. And it strives for a very different and welcoming spirit.

Sky of blackness and sorrow, sky of love, sky of tears. Sky of glory and sadness, sky of mercy, sky of fear.

If you see me performing, you're going, that guy is simply the most extroverted guy I've ever seen. But if you've seen me very often on a daily basis and all the while growing up, I was very, very introverted. Very introverted. So I have sort of the extremes of both of those characteristics.

I tend to be not my own best company. I can get a little lost when - if I don't have my work to occasionally focus me.

If you're an artist, you try to keep an ear to the ground and an ear to your heart.

We live in a post-authentic world, and today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It's all just what you're bringing when the lights go down. It's your teachers, your influences, and your personal history. At the end of the day, it's the power and purpose of your music that still matters.

The book was just something that came along after we played the Super Bowl and I wrote a little essay that went online. Then I had two or three weeks and I said, wow, that essay was pretty good. Maybe I'll try and write some other stuff. Writing about the depression, I just felt - you know, when you write a book like this, you have to open up your life. You have to be willing to do so to a certain degree.

Let there be sunshine, let there be rain, let the broken hearted love again.

The only thing I know as I get older is that I don't really need to be No. 1.

Madman drummers, bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat. In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat.

It took quite a bit of work and time and mistakes to begin to feel - to understand the strength that comes along with building a home life.That was very mysterious to me. I was very skeptical of it for a long time, and didn't understand it fully until Patti [ Scialfa] and I got together.

I know I ain't nobody's bargain, but hell a little touchup and a little paint.

I wouldn't be windmilling a Fender Telecaster if it weren't for Pete Townshend.

"Born To Run," that expands every time we go out. It just seems to you - more of your life fills it in, fills in the story. And when we hit it every night, it's always a huge catharsis. It's fascinating to see the audience singing it back to me. It's quite wonderful, you know, to see people that intensely singing your song.

They say "ya gotta stay hungry"... Hey Baby...I'm just about starvin' tonight!

If you're up there [on stage] thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there and it's not going to happen.So trying to learn how to overcome those - which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards self-consciousness and just blow it wide open. And you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together.

The question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq isn't a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic question, it's an American one. Protecting the democracy that we ask our sons and daughters to die for is our responsibility and our trust. Demanding accountability from our leaders is our job as citizens. It's the American way. So may the truth win out.

Use it, Rosie, that's what it's there for.

The first day I can remember looking into a mirror and being able to stand what I saw was the day I had a guitar in my hand.

An unfulfilled life makes a hard man.

In the end what you don't surrender, well, the world just strips away.

Let's raise our glass and let the hammer fly, yeah, this is the long good-bye.

You have moments of clarity, things become clear to you that you didn't understand before. But there's never any making ends meet or finding any time of longstanding peace of mind about something.

A dream of life comes to me, like a catfish dancing on the end of the line.

Fame, on its best day, is kind of like a friendly wave from a stranger by the side of the road. And when it's not so good, it's like a long walk home, all alone, with nobody in when you get there.

The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.