Steve Earle Quotes
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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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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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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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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.
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Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.
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I still write more songs about girls than anything else.
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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.
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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.
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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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I feel like I owe my audience something. They feed my kids. And I really like my job, a lot.
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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 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.
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Becoming interested in poetics got me interested in theater. Theater is supposed to be poetry, you know, before it's anything else. It just doesn't fly if it isn't musical.
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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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Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years.
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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 a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up.
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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.
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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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Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.
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I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.
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Having a child at 55... that's optimism.
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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.
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Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.