I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken.

I don't think you can ever do your best. Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best.

I don't know why I write really depressing songs. I'm a kind of melancholy guy, I suppose. But I figure I'm about normal.

Aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling. It's like the difference between being broke and being poor.

I don’t envision a long life for myself. Like, I think my life will run out before my work does, y’know? I’ve designed it that way.

I'd like to write some songs that are so good that nobody understands them. Not even myself.

Well I was born a rambler friends, and I intend to die that way. It could be twenty years from now it could be most any day. But if there ain't no whiskey and wimen lord behind those heavenly doors, I'm gonna take my chances down below and of that you can be sure.