Steve Earle Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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'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.

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

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

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'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.

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

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

The revolution starts now.

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

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

I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, trying to compare how many records I've sold or how much money I've made.

I still write more songs about girls than anything else.

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

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 right now.

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

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.

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

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

I don't usually read reviews.

I ain't ever satisfied.

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