Steve Earle Quotes

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.

Steve Earle

• Writing
• Guy
• Song
• Night
• Taken
• Songwriting
• Daylight

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Quotes to Explore

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Records
  • Stills
  • Radio

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • School
  • Home
  • Teacher

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Feels
  • Audience
  • Guilty

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Cry
  • Manipulating

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Simple
  • Understanding
  • Shadow

• I'm not a Democrat; I'm something well to the left of a Democrat, but I'm just realistic about the system.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Democrat
  • Realistic

• Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

  

  Steve Earle
  • World
  • Form
  • Islam

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Democracy
  • Comfortable
  • Static

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Justice
  • Criminals
  • Concepts

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Records
  • Selling
  • Embarrassing

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Husband
  • Serials

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Culture
  • Essentially
  • Counterculture

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Believe
  • Real
  • Democracy

• The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe.

  

  Steve Earle

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • People
  • Music
  • Genius

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Earth
  • Chance
  • motivation

• Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Poetry
  • Hardest

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Music
  • Political
  • Listening

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Tired
  • Highways
  • Interstate

• My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Oxygen
  • Wheelchairs

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Prayer
  • Charity
  • Lord

• 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.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Decision
  • Records
  • Pool

• My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.

  

  Steve Earle
  • Crisis
  • Areas
  • Penalties

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

  

  Steve Earle
  • Book