Steve Earle Quotes
-
To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.
-
My gift's primarily literary. That being said, I ended up a musician. By the time I made the bluegrass record...I'm more impressed with myself when I push the envelope musically than I am when I push it literality.
-
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.
-
You can go out and find ways to make your own record and get it out there now. If you really want to, you can be heard. Keep things simple. Learn to go out and play solo. That's a really really good thing to learn, if you're a singer-songwriter. Don't be dependent on a band because you may not always be able to afford one.
-
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.
-
Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion, too.
-
Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.
-
Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.
-
Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
-
The idea that murder victims' families are best served by continuing the cycle of violence is something that I consider to be not only a lie, but criminally negligent. You lie to victims' families when you tell them they're going to receive closure if they participate in the process and witness the execution of a human being.
-
My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.
-
Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me.
-
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 used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.
-
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'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.
-
New Orleans is a unique environment.
-
I'm constantly warning people that are involved in my life that I can go busk and make a living. I can make my rent in New York City in the subway, I promise, if I'm forced to.
-
I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.
-
Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.
-
I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.