Steve Earle quotes:

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

They say death and taxes are the only things that are inevitable. The truth is, you can not pay your taxes. I've done it, and there's consequences, but it can be done. Death you're not going to get out of, and you kind of got to deal with it.

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.

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.

There's a long tradition of people from the South living in New York City.

Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.

I love baseball. I'll probably end up one of those old farts who go to spring training in Florida every year and drive from game to game all day.

It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.

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

We're so terrified of death in Western culture that we have to make up a myth of an afterlife. I think there's something to be said for living your life very mindful of the fact that you're going to die because I think you carry yourself differently. It doesn't have to be this big, negative bummer.

I am connected to the past in a way that keeps me going forward. 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.

The human race survived the Inquisition. We can survive. It's like the Anne Frank quote: 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good at heart.' Given what happened to her, it's one of the miracles of the world that she said that.

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

New Orleans is a unique environment.

Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.

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

I'm constantly warning people that are involved in my life that I can go busk and make a living. I can make my rent in New York City in the subway, I promise, if I'm forced to.

I make an embarrassing amount of money for a borderline Marxist, just by selling 100,000 records. I don't sell millions of records, and I don't need to.

What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes.

You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.

My spiritual system is 12-step programs. That's the only one I've ever had. I didn't have one before that.

I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect.

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

As much as I'd like to think and as much as people mistakenly think my audience is blue collar people in the heart of America, my audience is basically, in the States, an NPR audience. I play college towns in the summer because that's who comes to see me.

I'm a country singer, and I'm comfortable with that. But why does a country singer have to play only on country radio or a rock singer only on a rock station? I still don't understand why it's that big a deal.

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.

My audience is, you know, pinkos in big cities.

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

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.

I really believe that if I make records that are indispensable to my audience, they'll go out and spend money to buy them, even if they've already downloaded them. If they can afford it. If they can't, I'd rather they be able to download it than not get it at all.

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

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.

If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.

I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me.

I'm not going to waste a second feeling sorry for myself because I'm not a bigger star than I am. I can walk down the street in most places in the world and I still drive really nice cars.

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 type fast. I type with three fingers - two on one hand, and I only get one going on the other. I think my thumb's in there, but I'm not sure. I may be no better than an orangutan when it comes to that.

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.

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.

San Antonio is like a military town. It's like literally - when I was growing up there, there were five Air Force bases, plus Fort Sam Houston. I was always sort of near the military.

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.

You can go out and find ways to make your own record and get it out there now. If you really want to, you can be heard. Keep things simple. Learn to go out and play solo. That's a really really good thing to learn, if you're a singer-songwriter. Don't be dependent on a band because you may not always be able to afford one.

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.

In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history.

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

Truman Capote is really an interesting cat.

My son was diagnosed with autism. He's OK, he makes eye contact, but he doesn't talk. He needs eight hours a day of very intensive school, and you wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much it costs.

I've been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now, and I never get tired of the view.

Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.

Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

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.

Having a child at 55... that's optimism.

At home, I'm lucky if I can write three or four hours before the phone starts ringing and the kids want to go to soccer.

Bob Dylan emerged from nowhere, like an alien. And that was just the start.

Bob Dylan is one of the very few people in the history of popular music who you can unquestionably apply that word [genius] to.

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....

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

Every day on Earth is another chance to get it right.

From the moment [Bob] Dylan arrived as a songwriter, he was [so] much better than everybody else around.

Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years.

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.

He's the real deal. Eric Taylor was one of my heroes and teachers when I started playing around Houston in the early 1970s.

I ain't ever satisfied...

I can deal with conservatives in a democracy. With real conservatives, I don't agree with them, but I understand why they believe what they believe and I believe they're being honest with me about it.

I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.

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 don't care what's happening in the mainstream of country music. I haven't in a long time.

I don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.

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.

I don't usually read reviews.

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

I had everything I need to get me killed.

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

I have no doubt in mind that I justify the space I take up in the world.

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

I love theater. I go all the time. It's one of the reasons I moved to New York. But I understand that I have limited range as an actor. I can only play people who talk like me.

I still write more songs about girls than anything else.

I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.

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 was born on this mountain, this mountains my home, she holds me and keeps me from worry and woe.

I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.

I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do.

I wish I was as sure about things as Bill Monroe was sure about things.

If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.

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

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

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

I'm one of the few people that I know that sings better than they did 20 years ago.

I'm supposed to make people cry, but not by manipulating.

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've been a serial husband, and I've done it badly every time.

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.

My audience doesn't agree with me on everything, but I love my audience, because they're totally okay with us having a dialogue.

My gift's primarily literary. That being said, I ended up a musician. By the time I made the bluegrass record...I'm more impressed with myself when I push the envelope musically than I am when I push it literality.

My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.

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

Part of it is, I think, just to let people know you've got a record out there and that you're still alive requires more work than it used to, because the traditional radio, bug chains of record stores, all of that, that doesn't exist anymore.

People hate good books to be over. I wish I could write a 700-page book.

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

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

Records are only one-dimensional. Even film is only one-dimensional. That's why music and live theatre is so important, because it's not the same thing. A recording is just a record of part of the experience, but it's not the whole experience.

Songwriters are expanding time rather than compressing time. My short stories tend to be old fashioned, with a beginning, middle and end.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

The creative core of New York has never been native New Yorkers; it's people from all over the world.

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.

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.

The revolution starts now.

The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe.

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.

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

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.

When you're really bummed out, the last thing you want to hear is up-tempo and positive. And it lets you know that you're not alone, that somebody has hurt before. It works the same way with chick songs as it does with political songs. When you hear somebody singing about these things, you know that you're not alone, that somebody else is suspicious of what's going on around us in the world. So you don't feel like you're crazy, and you feel like you might be able to make a difference.

Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.

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.

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

You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone.