Bruce Springsteen Quotes

I had spent about three months where I couldn't sing at all, so that was anxiety-provoking. But after that, I went back out. I sang for two hours in my garage one day to see if I had a voice.

The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is - a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law.

You get used to anything, sooner or later it just becomes your life.

No, I always felt that amongst my core fans- because there was a level of popularity that I had in the mid '80s that was sort of a bump on the scale- they fundamentally understood the values that are at work in my work.

When I got into "Anna Karenina" and "Brothers Karamazov" and "Crime and Punishment," that was the stuff that - that had a big effect on me, because it was so psychological.

It was like Elvis came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear

If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.

By the time I was 19, my parents weren't very authoritative over my life.I didn't have any doubt about that - at that time about what I was going to do or where I was going. I was a musician. I was going to play. I had a band. We were going to make enough money to survive on.

We said we'd walk together baby come what may.That come the twilight should we lose our way.If as we're walkin a hand should slip free,I'll wait for you And should I fall behind,Wait for me.

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.

It took quite a bit of work and time and mistakes to begin to feel - to understand the strength that comes along with building a home life.That was very mysterious to me. I was very skeptical of it for a long time, and didn't understand it fully until Patti [ Scialfa] and I got together.

I realized the only time I felt complete and peaceful was while I was playing or shortly afterwards, even though it was in front of thousands of other people, which most people wouldn't consider to be a safe place.

I've found that giving 100% to your job isn't the same as giving 100% of your life to your job. Very often when I thought I was giving 100% of my life to my job, I was simply obsessing over something.

I grew up with a very big extended family, with a lot of aunts. We had about five or six houses on one street.

The hungry and the haunted explode in a rock'n'roll band.

I was lucky I survived the motorcycle accident because I - bike went under the car. I flew out about 20 or 25 feet. I didn't have a helmet on. I hit my head on the pavement and knocked myself out, gave myself a brain concussion, screwed up my left leg. And I was - I was lucky then that I didn't get killed because I didn't have any protective clothing on whatsoever. And I took a pretty good beating. But, yeah, such was the nature of the day when the barber was called and Samson's locks were trimmed.

The name 'Boss' started with people that worked for me... It was not meant like Boss, capital B, it was meant like 'Boss, where's my dough this week?' And it was sort of just a term among friends. I never really liked it.

I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.

The criminal ineptitude makes you furious.

An unfulfilled life makes a hard man.

I met a girl and we ran away, I swore I'd make her happy every day. And how I made her cry, two faces have I.

Tonight I'm stepping lightly and I'm feeling no pain.

We live in a post-authentic world, and today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It's all just what you're bringing when the lights go down. It's your teachers, your influences, and your personal history. At the end of the day, it's the power and purpose of your music that still matters.

Your skin upon my skin, in the beating of our hearts, may the living let us in, before the dead tear us apart.

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.

The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown.

My heart's dark, but it's rising. I'm pulling all the faith I can see.

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

Adult life is dealing with an enormous amount of questions that don't have answers. So I let the mystery settle into my music. I don't deny anything, I don't advocate anything, I just live with it.

Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.

Blame it on the lies that killed us. Blame it on the truth that ran us down.

I believe the war on poverty is a more American idea than the war on the war on poverty. I believe that most people feel like that. And I believe that it ain't over till it's over.

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.

The Catholic religion at the time was much darker and more mysterious. The entire mass was in Latin. The church was - if you go to my church now, it's incredibly bright inside. But at - when I was young, it was very dark inside. And it was just the difference in the way that they've painted it since I've gone there. And it strives for a very different and welcoming spirit.

In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.

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. I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.

A pop song is a condensed version of a life in three minutes, whereas, when you go to write your prose, you have to find the rhythm in your words, and you have to find the rhythm in the voice that you have found and the way you're speaking.

I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.

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.

From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap, through the Badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.

You can beat on your chest, hell, any monkey can.

We gotta get out while we're young, 'cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.

There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.