Steve Earle Quotes
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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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Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.
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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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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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To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.
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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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Songwriters are expanding time rather than compressing time. My short stories tend to be old fashioned, with a beginning, middle and end.
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The creative core of New York has never been native New Yorkers; it's people from all over the world.
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I'll never believe that Americans have racticed in our history anything close to the purest form of democracy of the world. Because there are lots of democracies around the world that function better than ours does. It's always been that way. There's some truth to the idea that it's rigged, but there is a way that it's supposed to work that.
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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.
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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.
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What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything.
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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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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 one of the few people that I know that sings better than they did 20 years ago.
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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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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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My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.
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I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.
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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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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.
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I feel like I owe my audience something. They feed my kids. And I really like my job, a lot.
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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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I love baseball. I'll probably end up one of those old farts who go to spring training in Florida every year and drive from game to game all day.