Steve Earle Quotes
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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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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 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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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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I feel like I owe my audience something. They feed my kids. And I really like my job, a lot.
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Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion, too.
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I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.
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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 think the music business is changing. Artists that don't want to tour and just want to collect royalty checks and stay home are not going to be able to do that.
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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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I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.
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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.
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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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All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.
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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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Having a child at 55... that's optimism.
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My son was diagnosed with autism. He's OK, he makes eye contact, but he doesn't talk. He needs eight hours a day of very intensive school, and you wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much it costs.
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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'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 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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I still write more songs about girls than anything else.
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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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If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.
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I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.