Top 137 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Earle - Page 2

You can't write if you don't read.

My audience is, you know, pinkos in big cities.

I'm a country singer, and I'm comfortable with that. But why does a country singer have to play only on country radio or a rock singer only on a rock station? I still don't understand why it's that big a deal.

Every country that's ever been the most powerful country in the world ceases to be the most powerful country in the world at some point.

I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.

I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.

Music was very influential on me as a kid.

Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.

I've been a serial husband, and I've done it badly every time.

You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.

Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.

I don't get in vote in whether or how people remember me when I'm gone. It's really dangerous to sit around and worry about it too much, for me. It gets me way too in myself to worry about what people are going to think about me when I'm not around anymore.

Bob Dylan is one of the very few people in the history of popular music who you can unquestionably apply that word [genius] to.

What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything.

I make an embarrassing amount of money for a borderline Marxist, just by selling 100,000 records. I don't sell millions of records, and I don't need to.

What's important is you wake up in the morning and something doesn't exist, and when you finish you day's work something is in the world that wasn't there before.

Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.

You know I ain't never prayed before 'Cause it always seemed to me That prayin's the same as beggin' Lord, I don't take no charity.

I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, trying to compare how many records I've sold or how much money I've made.

People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.

I wish I was as sure about things as Bill Monroe was sure about things.

I don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.

Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years.

You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone.

We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.

Back then, the business depended on bohemians. ... They needed Kristofferson and Roger Miller ..It was the tail end of something...the last Tin Pan Alley. ...and we were the night shift! They gave us keys, because they knew the best songs weren't written in daylight.... We got our keys taken away several times...me and Guy Clark.

I'm supposed to make people cry, but not by manipulating.

I had everything I need to get me killed.

I'm not going to waste a second feeling sorry for myself because I'm not a bigger star than I am. I can walk down the street in most places in the world and I still drive really nice cars.

People hate good books to be over. I wish I could write a 700-page book.

I have no doubt in mind that I justify the space I take up in the world.

I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.

I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me.

I really believe that if I make records that are indispensable to my audience, they'll go out and spend money to buy them, even if they've already downloaded them. If they can afford it. If they can't, I'd rather they be able to download it than not get it at all.

I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.

I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.

When I write something simple I'm always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious - that everybody wants to be happy and free - the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that's what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.

Records are only one-dimensional. Even film is only one-dimensional. That's why music and live theatre is so important, because it's not the same thing. A recording is just a record of part of the experience, but it's not the whole experience.

From the moment [Bob] Dylan arrived as a songwriter, he was [so] much better than everybody else around.

I just had a child on purpose at age 56, I'm pretty f---ing optimistic.

I was born on this mountain, this mountains my home, she holds me and keeps me from worry and woe.

The revolution starts now.

I'll never believe that Americans have racticed in our history anything close to the purest form of democracy of the world. Because there are lots of democracies around the world that function better than ours does. It's always been that way. There's some truth to the idea that it's rigged, but there is a way that it's supposed to work that.

He's the real deal. Eric Taylor was one of my heroes and teachers when I started playing around Houston in the early 1970s.

Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.

I'm not a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up.

The reason music became so powerful to our generation is that it's art you can consume in your car, and we were driving around a lot.

My therapist says that I choose women that I couldn't possibly succeed in a relationship with because I really want to be alone. Which sounds complicated and convoluted to me, but I don't know. Maybe she's right. There's a part of me that wants that.

Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.

I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.

My audience doesn't agree with me on everything, but I love my audience, because they're totally okay with us having a dialogue.

Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion, too.

I love theater. I go all the time. It's one of the reasons I moved to New York. But I understand that I have limited range as an actor. I can only play people who talk like me.

I don't type fast. I type with three fingers - two on one hand, and I only get one going on the other. I think my thumb's in there, but I'm not sure. I may be no better than an orangutan when it comes to that.

It's incredibly irresponsible to allow victims' family members to witness executions.

I'm trying to make records where people don't feel cheated. Nashville has been guilty of insulting the Country Music audience for years and years.

Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.

Maybe I'm not as big a star as Bruce Springsteen because I'm not as good. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I still have an audience of a certain size. I think it's one of the things I'm luckiest.

Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.

I've been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now and I never get tired of the view.