Quotes By Bruce Springsteen

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.

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.

Your success story is a bigger story than whatever you're trying to say on stage. Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.

I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.

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.

In America everything's about who's number one today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Talk about a dream, try to make it real.

There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.

We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves.

I have my ideas, I have my music and I also just enjoy showing off, so that's a big part of it. Also, I like to get up onstage and behave insanely or express myself physically, and the band can get pretty silly.

I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination.

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.

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

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.

I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.

It's always felt natural, because I'm generally very comfortable with people.

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.

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.

I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

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.

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.

When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.

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.

I think politics come out of psychology.