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Songwriters are expanding time rather than compressing time. My short stories tend to be old fashioned, with a beginning, middle and end.
Steve Earle -
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.
Steve Earle
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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.
Steve Earle -
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.
Steve Earle -
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.
Steve Earle -
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 -
I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.
Steve Earle -
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.
Steve Earle
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My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.
Steve Earle -
Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.
Steve Earle -
When you're really bummed out, the last thing you want to hear is up-tempo and positive. And it lets you know that you're not alone, that somebody has hurt before. It works the same way with chick songs as it does with political songs. When you hear somebody singing about these things, you know that you're not alone, that somebody else is suspicious of what's going on around us in the world. So you don't feel like you're crazy, and you feel like you might be able to make a difference.
Steve Earle -
I was born on this mountain, this mountains my home, she holds me and keeps me from worry and woe.
Steve Earle -
Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.
Steve Earle -
I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.
Steve Earle
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I'm not a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up.
Steve Earle -
I mainly read non-fiction, and that's probably because I have a huge amount of insecurity about my lack of education and the things I don't know.
Steve Earle -
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.
Steve Earle -
I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.
Steve Earle -
I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.
Steve Earle -
Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me.
Steve Earle
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I'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.
Steve Earle -
I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.
Steve Earle -
Having a child at 55... that's optimism.
Steve Earle -
What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.
Steve Earle