Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?
The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
We've got no fairytale ending, in God's hands our fate is complete. Your heaven's here in my heart, our love's this dust beneath my feet.
There is something about the melody of 'Thunder Road' that just suggests 'new day.' It suggests morning; it suggests something opening up.
Baby, in a world without pity Do you think what I'm askin's too much I just want to feel you in my arms Share a little of that Human Touch.
I'm the kind of person, I think a lot about everything. Nothin' I can do about it. It's like, I'm a thinkin' fool. That's a big part of me.
The different social forces that affected my parents' lives or my friends' lives or I saw around me became essential for me to write about.
I didn't know if it would be a success-ful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter.
Your success story is a bigger story than whatever you're trying to say on stage. Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.
When I was young I was very shy and that was my personality. I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety.
It doesn't matter what happened last night or the night - or tomorrow night. It's all about what you're doing with this audience right now.
I was in my late 20s, in the process of shaping my musical outlook and what I wanted it to be about, when I first encountered Woody Guthrie.
I studied other singers, so I would learn how to phrase, and learn how to breathe. And the main thing was, I learned how to inhabit my song.
Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.
When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.
We struggled together, and sometimes, we struggled with one another... We took care of one another... In the end, we kept faith in each other.
So I bought a forty-four magnum, it was solid steel cast, and in the blessed name of Elvis, well I just let it blast 'til my TV lay in pieces.
That's what being a front man is all about - the idea of having something supple underneath you, that machine that roars and can turn on a dime.
Every song has a piece of you in it, because just general regret, love. You have to basically zero in on the truth of those particular emotions.
I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination.
Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire.
Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why.
Madman drummers, bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat. In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat.
You can't have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can't get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses.
If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it.
I never start with a political point of view. I believe that your politics are emotionally and psychologically determined by your early experiences.
When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do.
I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.
Once you get into the book, you've got to constantly find your - the rhythm of your prose. And it ends up being quite a musical experience either way.
Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.
The highway is alive tonight But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad.
For me, once I count the band in, and I delve deep into my song, I feel a certain sort of integrity and integration that I rarely find in my daily life.
The star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention.
If the angels are unkind or the season is dark Or if in the end Love just falls apart Well then here's to our destruction Baby let me be your soul driver.
Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.
The Jersey Shore is the kind of place where the policeman has a little cottage that might have been in the family for years and many other people call home.
I was an insecure young man. So my need for total dedication from the people I was working with was very great. Those things were tempered as time passed by.
But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention.
I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.
I suppose when you do it correctly, a good introduction and a good outro makes the song feel like it's coming out of something and then evolving into something.
You know, my music utilizes things from the past, because that's what the past is for. It's to learn from. It's not to limit you, you shouldn't be limited by it.
For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn't do very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn't fit in; my intelligence was elsewhere.
I always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children.
For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsibility, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in.
All people have is hope. That's what brings the next day and whatever that day may bring... A hope grounded in the real world of living, friendship, work, family...
There's a beauty in work and I love it, all different kinds of work. That's what I consider it. Rock is my job, and that's my work. And I work my ass off, you know.
While I wasn't very good at much else in school, in my creative-writing classes or when we had to do some writing in my English classes, I tended to do better at it.
My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.
I was the only person I'd ever met who had a record contract. None of the E Street Band, as far as I know, had been on an airplane until Columbia sent us to Los Angeles.
The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad.