Steve Earle Quotes
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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.
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Part of it is, I think, just to let people know you've got a record out there and that you're still alive requires more work than it used to, because the traditional radio, bug chains of record stores, all of that, that doesn't exist anymore.
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I'm supposed to make people cry, but not by manipulating.
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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.
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I can deal with conservatives in a democracy. With real conservatives, I don't agree with them, but I understand why they believe what they believe and I believe they're being honest with me about it.
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America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.
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The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.
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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.
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I'm not a Democrat; I'm something well to the left of a Democrat, but I'm just realistic about the system.
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Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.
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I don't care what's happening in the mainstream of country music. I haven't in a long time.
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I've been a serial husband, and I've done it badly every time.
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Bob Dylan is one of the very few people in the history of popular music who you can unquestionably apply that word genius to.
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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.
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Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.
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My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.
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You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.
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Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.
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People hate good books to be over. I wish I could write a 700-page book.
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I had everything I need to get me killed.
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Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.
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I wish I was as sure about things as Bill Monroe was sure about things.
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The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe.
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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.