I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.
— Steve Earle
You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.
Music was very influential on me as a kid.
Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.
I've never made a record that I'm ashamed of.
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.
My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.
I promise you that I did not become an addict because of anything to do with the behavior of either of my parents. Everybody has to make their own choices.
It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.
Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.
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.
New Orleans is a unique environment.
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.
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.
The creative core of New York has never been native New Yorkers; it's people from all over the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can't write if you don't read.
I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.
I've been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now, and I never get tired of the view.
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 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.
I love e-books. I can carry the complete works of William Shakespeare around with me all the time. Just think about that. Whether I'm on an airplane or wherever. Being able to have a library in your back pocket basically is something I support.
Funerals are a pagan rite. There's not any doubt about it.
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.
Having a child at 55... that's optimism.
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.
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.
I don't care what's happening in the mainstream of country music. I haven't in a long time.
There's a long tradition of people from the South living in New York City.
I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.
Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.
My audience is, you know, pinkos in big cities.
I've been a serial husband, and I've done it badly every time.
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.
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.
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.
To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.
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 love 'Harry Potter.' I love those books. That started because I lived with a woman who had kids who were, like, 10 and 7 when they moved in with me.
My spiritual system is 12-step programs. That's the only one I've ever had. I didn't have one before that.
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 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.
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.
You can listen to carpenters talk for hours in Ireland. The people have a relationship to words that I don't think you will run into anyplace in the world.
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.
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'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.
