Steve Earle Quotes:

I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.

Topics: Believe, Profound, Way

It's incredibly irresponsible to allow victims' family members to witness executions.

Topics: Execution, Victim, Members

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.

Topics: Song, Voice, Crafts, Songwriters

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.

Topics: Country, Redneck, Thinking

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.

Topics: Song, Writing, Years

My audience doesn't agree with me on everything, but I love my audience, because they're totally okay with us having a dialogue.

Topics: Okay, Dialogue, Audience

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

Topics: Islam, World, Bizarre

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.

Topics: Home, Thinking, Artist

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

Topics: Agreement, People, Groups

I feel like I owe my audience something. They feed my kids. And I really like my job, a lot.

Topics: Jobs, Kids, Feels

I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.

source: - "Readers recommend: songs about obstacles" by Peter Kimpton, www.theguardian.com. September 10, 2015.

Topics: Fear, Thinking, Obstacles, Biggest Obstacles

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.

Topics: Believe, Records, Able, Downloads

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.

source: - "Q&A: Earle takes songwriting break to honor Van Zandt". Interview with Robert Levine, www.reuters.com. April 24, 2009.

Topics: Coffee, Cowboy, Boots, My Cowboy, Cowboy Boot

Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.

Topics: Political, Listening, Wells

Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.

Topics: Unions, Ends, Soviet Union, Soviet

I love theater. I go all the time. It's one of the reasons I moved to New York. But I understand that I have limited range as an actor. I can only play people who talk like me.

Topics: New York, Play, People

I've been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now, and I never get tired of the view.

Topics: Tired, Views, Eight, Interstate, Forty Eight

I'm trying to make records where people don't feel cheated. Nashville has been guilty of insulting the Country Music audience for years and years.

Topics: Country, Nashville, Years

I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.

Topics: Writing, Stories, Four

I'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.

Topics: Beautiful, Years, Texas

I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.

Topics: Thinking, Democracy, Obvious

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.

Topics: Pain, Joy, Tolerance, Music And Life

You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.

Topics: People, Democracy, Static

The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.

Topics: Teacher, Couple, Drama

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.

Topics: Musical, Becoming, Theater

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.

Topics: Hands, Sea, Fishing

You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.

Topics: Way

You know I ain't never prayed before 'Cause it always seemed to me That prayin's the same as beggin' Lord, I don't take no charity.

Topics: Prayer, Causes, Charity

He's the real deal. Eric Taylor was one of my heroes and teachers when I started playing around Houston in the early 1970s.

Topics: Teacher, Real, Hero, Playing Around

I still write more songs about girls than anything else.

Topics: Girl, Song, Writing

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.

Topics: Insecurity, Fiction, Lack Of Education

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.

Topics: Ideas, Government, Democracy, Against Death Penalty

I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.

Topics: Hippie, Grew, Grew Up, Counterculture, Counter Culture

If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.

Topics: Way

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.

Topics: Simple, Play, Band, Singer-songwriters

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

source: - "Death in Texas" by Steve Earle, www.theguardian.com. January 21, 2001.

Topics: America, Justice, Rehabilitation, Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice System

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.

Topics: Soccer, Kids, Home

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.

Topics: Country, Powerful, World, Powerful Countries

Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.

source: - "'John Walker's Blues' meets the boos". www.cnn.com. July 23, 2002.

Topics: Real, Enemy, Taliban

Funerals are a pagan rite. There's not any doubt about it.

Topics: Funeral, Doubt, Pagan

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.

Topics: Writing, Years, People

Having a child at 55... that's optimism.

Topics: Children, Optimism

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.

Topics: Thinking, Political, Fabric

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.

Topics: Baseball, Spring, Years, Spring Training, Old Farts

I don't usually read reviews.

Topics: Reviews

I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.

Topics: Believe, Men, Evil

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.

Topics: Song, Writing, Guitar, Processors

I was born on this mountain, this mountains my home, she holds me and keeps me from worry and woe.

Topics: Home, Worry, Mountain

I had everything I need to get me killed.

Topics: Needs

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

Topics: Dad, Oxygen, Years

I've been a serial husband, and I've done it badly every time.

Topics: Husband, Done

Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.

source: - Song: God Is God, Album: I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, 2011

Topics: Motivation, Another Chance, Earth

I don't care what's happening in the mainstream of country music. I haven't in a long time.

source: - "Steve Earle, Folk Hero" by Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

Topics: Country, Long, Care

The revolution starts now.

Topics: Struggle, Revolution

New Orleans is a unique environment.

Topics: Unique, New Orleans, Environment

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.

Topics: Dust, Singers, Matter, Singer-songwriters

If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.

Topics: Leisure, Workaholic

Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.

Topics: Writing, Want, Hardest

I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.

Topics: Towns, Neighbor, Good Neighbor

The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe.

Topics: Writing, Thinking, Stupidest

I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect.

Topics: Heart, Thinking, Criticism

By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them....

Topics: Song, Writing, Cds

Part of it is, I think, just to let people know you've got a record out there and that you're still alive requires more work than it used to, because the traditional radio, bug chains of record stores, all of that, that doesn't exist anymore.

Topics: Music, Thinking, People, Record Stores

San Antonio is like a military town. It's like literally - when I was growing up there, there were five Air Force bases, plus Fort Sam Houston. I was always sort of near the military.

Topics: Growing Up, Military, Air, San Antonio, Antonio

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.

Topics: Song, Taken, Writing, Tin Pan Alley, Night Shift

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.

Topics: Lying, Ideas, Violence, Murder Victims, Cycle Of Violence

Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me...

Topics: Hands

The creative core of New York has never been native New Yorkers; it's people from all over the world.

Topics: New York, People, Creative

My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.

Topics: Kids, Doe, Radical

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.

Topics: Song, School, Kids, Grammar School

Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.

Topics: Song, Writing, Italian

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

Topics: Character, Voice, Trouble

I just had a child on purpose at age 56, I'm pretty f---ing optimistic.

Topics: Children, Optimistic, Age

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.

Topics: Believe, School, Eye

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.

Topics: New York, Cities, People

There's a long tradition of people from the South living in New York City.

Topics: New York, Cities, Long

What's important is you wake up in the morning and something doesn't exist, and when you finish you day's work something is in the world that wasn't there before.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Morning, Important, Wake Up, What's Important

I'm not a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Racist

Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.

source: - "Woody Guthrie". www.thenation.com. July 02, 2003.

Topics: Believe, Anomalies, Woody

The reason music became so powerful to our generation is that it's art you can consume in your car, and we were driving around a lot.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Art, Powerful, Our Generation

I have no doubt in mind that I justify the space I take up in the world.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Space, Doubt, Mind

I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.

Topics: Jail, People, Chef

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.

source: - Source: www.rollingstone.com

Topics: Succeed, Complicated

People hate good books to be over. I wish I could write a 700-page book.

source: - "Musician Steve Earle". The Tavis Smiley Show, www.pbs.org. May 23, 2011.

Topics: Hate, Book, Writing

Bob Dylan is one of the very few people in the history of popular music who you can unquestionably apply that word [genius] to.

source: - Source: www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Topics: People, Bob, Genius, Popular Music

Maybe I'm not as big a star as Bruce Springsteen because I'm not as good. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I still have an audience of a certain size. I think it's one of the things I'm luckiest.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Stars, Thinking, Size, Springsteen

Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.

source: - "Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature". www.gq-magazine.co.uk. October 13, 2016.

Topics: Genius, Use, Term

I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Discipline, Drug, Persons

I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.

source: - Source: www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Topics: Jobs, Simple, Two

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.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Thinking, People, Worry

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.

source: - Source: www.rollingstone.com

Topics: Song, Writing, Exercise

I make an embarrassing amount of money for a borderline Marxist, just by selling 100,000 records. I don't sell millions of records, and I don't need to.

Topics: Needs, Records, Selling, Borderline

I wish I was as sure about things as Bill Monroe was sure about things.

Topics: Wish, Bills

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.

source: - "Will Sheff Meets Steve Earle". Interview with Michael Tedder, www.spin.com. May 17, 2011.

Topics: Past, Pushing Forward, Reaching, Reaching Back

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.

source: - "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

Topics: Country, Running, Song, Bummed Out

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.

source: - "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

Topics: Girl, Song, Writing

I'm not a Democrat; I'm something well to the left of a Democrat, but I'm just realistic about the system.

source: - "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

Topics: Realistic, Democrat, Wells

I can deal with conservatives in a democracy. With real conservatives, I don't agree with them, but I understand why they believe what they believe and I believe they're being honest with me about it.

source: - "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

Topics: Real, Believe, Democracy

People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Thinking, People, Trying

Songwriters are expanding time rather than compressing time. My short stories tend to be old fashioned, with a beginning, middle and end.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Stories, Beginning Middle And End, Ends

I ain't ever satisfied.

source: - Song: I Ain't Ever Satisfied, Album: Exit 0

Topics: Satisfied

My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.

source: - "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

Topics: Death Penalty, Penalties, Activism

Records are only one-dimensional. Even film is only one-dimensional. That's why music and live theatre is so important, because it's not the same thing. A recording is just a record of part of the experience, but it's not the whole experience.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Live Theatre, Important, Records

What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Opposites, Drug, Realizing

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.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Stars, Sorry, Nice, Feeling Sorry, Nice Cars

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.

source: - Source: www.rollingstone.com

Topics: Believe, Democracy, World

I don't type fast. I type with three fingers - two on one hand, and I only get one going on the other. I think my thumb's in there, but I'm not sure. I may be no better than an orangutan when it comes to that.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Thinking, Hands, Two, Orangutans

From the moment [Bob] Dylan arrived as a songwriter, he was [so] much better than everybody else around.

source: - Source: www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Topics: Bob, Moments, Dylan

I'm supposed to make people cry, but not by manipulating.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: People, Cry

I'm one of the few people that I know that sings better than they did 20 years ago.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Years, People, Years Ago

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.

source: - "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

Topics: Song, Hurt, Crazy, Bummed Out

You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone.

source: - "Will Sheff Meets Steve Earle". Interview with Michael Tedder, www.spin.com. May 17, 2011.

Topics: Art, Mean, Decision

I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, trying to compare how many records I've sold or how much money I've made.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Sorry, Feelings, Trying, Feeling Sorry

Bob Dylan emerged from nowhere, like an alien. And that was just the start.

source: - Source: www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Topics: Bob, Aliens, Dylan

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.

source: - Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

Topics: Musician, Records, Envelopes, Bluegrass, Impressed