The book was just something that came along after we played the Super Bowl and I wrote a little essay that went online. Then I had two or three weeks and I said, wow, that essay was pretty good. Maybe I'll try and write some other stuff. Writing about the depression, I just felt - you know, when you write a book like this, you have to open up your life. You have to be willing to do so to a certain degree.

Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose.

I took a month long vacation in the stratosphere, and you know it's very hard to hold your breath.

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

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.

The E Street band casts a pretty wide net. Our influences go all the way back to the early primitive garage music, and also, we've had everything in the band from jazz players to Kansas City trumpet players to Nils Lofgren, one of the great rock guitarists in the world.

All you can do is show people...You tell stories that are true and compelling.