All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

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

There are only two kinds of songs; there's the blues, and there's zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

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

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

What I do is between me and the Lord, to examine and possibly alter the state of grace in which I live, and thereby the state of grace of anybody who listens.

Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things/ And the only words that are worth remembering.

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.

Human's can't live in the present as animals do; they just live in the present. But human's are always thinking about the future or the past.

Im the mold that grunge was grown in.

Forbidden things - my God, I'm drawn to them like a moth to a flame.

Only a man could come up with something so ruthless, so essentially stupid and yet brutally effective.

Our country doesn't win anymore. We don't win on trade. We don't win on the military. We can't defeat ISIS. We're not taking care of our great people, the veterans. We're not taking care of them.

There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release.

Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.

We perhaps need to snatch happiness in little pieces, learning to recognize the elements of happiness and then treasuring them while they last.

One thing I have learned about Christians, having organized them for years - when they lose, they quit. And when they win they quit. We are just quitters.

Dear, lovely game of cricket that can stir us so profoundly, that can lift up our hearts and break them.

The medium is not the message - the message is the message.

The rewards of virtue alone abide secure.