I had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns.

When I look at myself, I don't see the man I wanted to be.

I believe when your children are born that you are reborn in some fashion.

I'm used to writing something, it becomes a record, it comes out. Then I go perform and I play it and I get this immediate feedback from the audience. So that's been the pattern of my life.

Did God make man in a breath of holy fire, or did he crawl on up out of the muck and mire?

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.

Jack the Rabbit and Weak Knee Willie, you know they're gonna be there. Sloppy Sue and Big Bones Billy, they'll be coming up for air.