Bruce Springsteen Quotes And Sayings

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.

Yeah, My Son Likes A Lot Of Guitar Bands. He Gave Me Something The Other Day Which Was Really Good. He'll Burn A Cd For Me Full Of Things That He Has, So He's A Pretty Good Call If I Want To Check Some Of That Stuff Out... The Other Two Aren't Quite Into That Yet.

I Like Narrative Storytelling As Being Part Of A Tradition, A Folk Tradition.

My Only General Rule Was To Steer Away From Things I Played With The Band Over The Past Couple Of Tours. I Was Interested In Re-shaping The Rising Material For Live Shows, So People Could Hear The Bare Bones Of That.

From The Beginning, I Imagined I Would Have A Long Work Life.

I Was Always Concerned With Writing To My Age At A Particular Moment. That Was The Way I Would Keep Faith With The Audience That Supported Me As I Went Along.

I Didn't Know If It Would Be A Success-ful One, Or What The Stages Would Be, But I Always Saw Myself As A Lifetime Musician And Songwriter.

I Always Wanted My Music To Influence The Life You Were Living Emotionally - With Your Family, Your Lover, Your Wife, And, At A Certain Point, With Your Children.

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.

In The Early Years, I Found A Voice That Was My Voice And Also Partly My Father's Voice. But Isn't That What You Always Do? Why Do Kids At 5 Years Old Go Into The Closet And Put Their Daddy's Shoes On? Hey, My Kids Do It.

I'm A Synthesist. I'm Always Making Music. And I Make A Lot Of Different Kinds Of Music All The Time. Some Of It Gets Finished And Some Of It Doesn't.

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.

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.

When I First Started In Rock, I Had A Big Guy's Audience For My Early Records. I Had A Very Straight Image, Particularly Through The Mid '80s.

Basically, I Was Pretty Ostracized In My Hometown. Me And A Few Other Guys Were The Town Freaks- And There Were Many Occasions When We Were Dodging Getting Beaten Up Ourselves.

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.

Yeah, I Had Gay Friends. The First Thing I Realized Was That Everybody's Different, And It Becomes Obvious That All Of The Gay Stereotypes Are Ridiculous.

In America Everything's About Who's Number One Today.

Certainly Tolerance And Acceptance Were At The Forefront Of My Music.

The Only Thing I Can Say About Having This Type Of Success Is That You Can Get Yourself In Trouble Because Basically The World Is Set Open For You. People Will Say Yes To Anything You Ask, So It's Basically Down To You And What You Want Or Need.

It's A Sad Man My Friend Who's Livin' In His Own Skin And Can't Stand The Company.

Blind Faith In Your Leaders, Or In Anything, Will Get You Killed.

Talk About A Dream, Try To Make It Real.

If They Had Told Me I Was The Janitor And Would Have To Mop Up And Clean The Toilets After The Show In Order To Play, I Probably Would Have Done It.

Until I Realized That Rock Music Was My Connection To The Rest Of The Human Race, I Felt Like I Was Dying, For Some Reason, And I Didn't Know Why.

The Best Music, You Can Seek Some Shelter In It Momentarily, But It's Essentially There To Provide You Something To Face The World With.

Some Of The Greatest Blues Music Is Some Of The Darkest Music You've Ever Heard.

I Was The Only Person I'd Ever Met Who Had A Record Contract. None Of The E Street Band, As Far As I Know, Had Been On An Airplane Until Columbia Sent Us To Los Angeles.

If You're Good, You're Always Looking Over Your Shoulder.

I Still Like To Go To Record Stores, I Like To Just Wander Around And I'll Buy Whatever Catches My Attention.

And Whether You're Drawn To Gospel Music Or Church Music Or Honky-tonk Music, It Informs Your Character And It Informs Your Talent.

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.

We All Have Stories We're Living And Telling Ourselves.

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.

I'm Interested In What It Means To Live In America. I'm Interested In The Kind Of Country That We Live In And Leave Our Kids. I'm Interested In Trying To Define What That Country Is. I Got The Chutzpa Or Whatever You Want To Say To Believe That If I Write A Really Good About It, It's Going To Make A Difference.

There Is A Real Patriotism Underneath The Best Of My Music But It Is A Critical, Questioning And Often Angry Patriotism.

I Think Politics Come Out Of Psychology.

Work Creates An Enormous Sense Of Self And I Saw That In My Mother. She Was An Enormous, Towering Figure To Me In The Best Possible Way. I Picked Up A Lot Of Things From Her In The Way That I Work... I Also Picked Up A Lot Of The Failings Of When Your Father Doesn't Have Those Things And That Results In A House That Turns Into A Minefield.

Getting An Audience Is Hard. Sustaining An Audience Is Hard. It Demands A Consistency Of Thought, Of Purpose, And Of Action Over A Long Period Of Time.

For Me, I Was Somebody Who Was A Smart Young Guy Who Didn't Do Very Well In School. The Basic System Of Education, I Didn't Fit In; My Intelligence Was Elsewhere.

In The Third Grade, A Nun Stuffed Me In A Garbage Can Under Her Desk Because She Said That's Where I Belonged. I Also Had The Distinction Of Being The Only Altar Boy Knocked Down By A Priest During Mass.

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.

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.

When I Was Very, Very Young, I Decided That I Was Gonna Catalogue My Times Because That's What Other People Who I Admired Did. That's What Bob Dylan Did, That's What Frank Sinatra Did, Hank Williams Did, In Very Different Ways.

Most Bands Don't Work Out. A Small Unit Democracy Is Very, Very Difficult.

I'm Not In Any Rush. I'm Not Somebody Who, If I Write A Song, I Get It Out. That's Not Something I've Ever Really Quite Done.

The Wonderful Thing About Rock Music Is Even If You Hate The Other Person, Sometimes You Need Him More, You Know. In Other Words If He's The Guy That Made That Sound, He's The Guy That Made That Sound, And Without That Guy Making That Sound, You Don't Have A Band, You Know.

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.

An Outgrowth Of Having A Long Career Is That I Have A Lot Of Interesting Things Around That I Get To Revisit, And Someday Get To The Place Where They Become Something That I Want To Do Next.

Steve Van Zandt, The Poor Guy, Doesn't Get To Play Enough As It Is With Me Hogging A Lot Of The Solos. Steve Has Always Been A Fabulous Guitarist. Back From The Day When We Were Both Teenagers Together, He Led His Band And Played Lead And Was Always A Hot Guitar Player.