Bruce Springsteen Quotes

Mister, I ain't a boy, no I'm a man, and i believe in a promised land.

Nobody wins unless everybody wins.

Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.

You're young and you're always in pursuit your young manhood. You're trying to figure out - what does that mean? What does - you know, there's a lot of pressure on young men to sort that out. And, you know, we tend to gravitate towards one-dimensional iconography as far as what it means to be a fully grown man. And you can get lost in so much of it out there.

Just sitting around waiting for my life to begin, while it was all just slipping away.

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

Blood moon risin' in a sky of black dust, tell me baby, who do you trust?

The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

Walk tall, or baby don't walk at all.

'Darkness on the Edge of Town' came out of a huge body of work that had tons of very happy songs.

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.

I think I created my particular stage persona out of my dad's life. And perhaps I even built it to suit him to some degree. I was looking for - when I was looking for a voice to mix with my voice, I put on my father's work clothes, as I say in the book, and I went to work.

The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence.

I guess there's just a meanness in this world

It's not the time in your life, it's the life in your time.

I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.

You can't kill your way to security and you can't lead by scaring people.

When I die throw my body in the back and drive me to the junk yard in my Cadillac.

Judge said, what you got in your defense son? Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.

Is a dream a lie if it don't come true? Or is it something worse?

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.

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.

She's a walkin', talkin' reason to live.

I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that's the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up - either religious or social laws - become meaningless.

The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that. I think that Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power.

You ride in a limousine the first time, it's a big thrill but after that it's just a stupid car.

Every rock song is some variation of 'Pull down your pants'

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

Someday girl, I don't know when, were gonna get to the place where we really want to go, and we'll walk in the sun. But til then, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.

I couldn't worry about whether I`m gonna make it onstage or not. You can't. You just gotta do it. And if you do, you do, and if you don't, you don't, and then something else happens. That's the point of the live performance.

I didn't have a blueprint from my childhood that I could call on, which is an enormous deficit when you're trying to put together a family life. I didn't see a family life where men were thriving inside of it. You know, my dad tended to blame the family for his inability to achieve what he wanted to achieve, you know? So, unfortunately, I was coming from that particular frame of mind.

You can't be afraid of getting old. Old is good, if you're gathering in life. Our band is good at understanding that equation.

I would rather feel the hurt inside, yes I would darling, than know the emptiness that your heart must hide.

They wanted to know why I did what I did. Well, sir I guess there's just meanness in the world.

I got a house full of Rembrandts and priceless art, and all the little girls they wanna tear me apart.

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.

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.

The songs themselves do broaden out as time passes and take on subtly different meanings, take on more meaning, I find.

I'm ready to grow young again

You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you're making those connections with your audience then they're going to go right along with it.

And at the time, for one of the few times in my life I didn't have a band, I just had myself and the guitar, so I was going to have to do something with just my voice, just the guitar and just my songs that was going to move someone enough to give me a shot. So I wrote songs that were very lyrically alive and lyrically dense. And they were unique, but it really came out of the motivation to - or I understood it was - I was going to have to make my mark that way.

Physical pain is my friend. I pursue it every night for four hours.

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.

In the end what you don't surrender, well, the world just strips away.

Everybody's got a hungry heart.

Elvis Presley is all there is. There just ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with Elvis. He wrote the book. He is everything to do and not to do in the music business.

You'll walk with me out on the wire, cuz baby, I'm just a scared and lonely rider, but I gotta know how it feels... I want to know love is wild, babe, I want to know love is real.

Talk about a dream, try to make it real. You wake up in the night with a fear so real. Spend your life waiting for a moment that just don’t come. Well don’t waste your time waiting.