You can beat the drum so hard that people stop listening. I wanted to use my voice wisely and not expend it wastefully.

I always felt that the musician's job was to provide an alternative source of information.

If you have written really well, people will swear that it happened to you.

They put a rifle in my hand, sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill the Yellow man.

You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.

After 'Born to Run,' I had a reaction to my good fortune. With success, it felt like a lot of people who'd come before me lost some essential part of themselves. My greatest fear was that success was going to change or diminish that part of myself.

I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses - that's not the American dream. That's the booby prize, in the end. Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them - if, when you achieve them, you believe that this is the end in and of itself - then you've been suckered in. Because those are the consolation prizes, if you're not careful, for selling yourself out, or letting the best of yourself slip away.