Steve Earle Quotes

I'm trying to make records where people don't feel cheated. Nashville has been guilty of insulting the Country Music audience for years and years.

I have a theory that the people who cook in jails are British chefs.

What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything.

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

When I write something simple I'm always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious - that everybody wants to be happy and free - the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that's what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.

The reason music became so powerful to our generation is that it's art you can consume in your car, and we were driving around a lot.

Back then, the business depended on bohemians. ... They needed Kristofferson and Roger Miller ..It was the tail end of something...the last Tin Pan Alley. ...and we were the night shift! They gave us keys, because they knew the best songs weren't written in daylight.... We got our keys taken away several times...me and Guy Clark.

I don't usually read reviews.

My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.

Becoming interested in poetics got me interested in theater. Theater is supposed to be poetry, you know, before it's anything else. It just doesn't fly if it isn't musical.

I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.

I still write more songs about girls than anything else.

I feel like I owe my audience something. They feed my kids. And I really like my job, a lot.

You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.

I'm not a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up.

Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me.

Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.

I think the music business is changing. Artists that don't want to tour and just want to collect royalty checks and stay home are not going to be able to do that.

I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.

I just had a child on purpose at age 56, I'm pretty f---ing optimistic.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.

I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

The idea that murder victims' families are best served by continuing the cycle of violence is something that I consider to be not only a lie, but criminally negligent. You lie to victims' families when you tell them they're going to receive closure if they participate in the process and witness the execution of a human being.

New Orleans is a unique environment.

Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.

I'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.

Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.

Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.

My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.

The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.

We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.

I'm not a Democrat; I'm something well to the left of a Democrat, but I'm just realistic about the system.

What's important is you wake up in the morning and something doesn't exist, and when you finish you day's work something is in the world that wasn't there before.

People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.

Maybe I'm not as big a star as Bruce Springsteen because I'm not as good. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I still have an audience of a certain size. I think it's one of the things I'm luckiest.

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.

I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.

I don't think I'm a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it's in my fabric.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

I mainly read non-fiction, and that's probably because I have a huge amount of insecurity about my lack of education and the things I don't know.

You know I ain't never prayed before 'Cause it always seemed to me That prayin's the same as beggin' Lord, I don't take no charity.

By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.

It's incredibly irresponsible to allow victims' family members to witness executions.

Every country that's ever been the most powerful country in the world ceases to be the most powerful country in the world at some point.

Funerals are a pagan rite. There's not any doubt about it.

The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.