Steve Earle Quotes
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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.
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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.
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At home, I'm lucky if I can write three or four hours before the phone starts ringing and the kids want to go to soccer.
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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.
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You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.
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I don't think I'm a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it's in my fabric.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The revolution starts now.
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I'm one of the few people that I know that sings better than they did 20 years ago.
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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.
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It's incredibly irresponsible to allow victims' family members to witness executions.
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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.
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If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.
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I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.
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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.
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Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.
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People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.
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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.
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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.
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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.