Quotes By Bruce Springsteen

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

This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.

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.

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.

The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

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.

The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

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

Plus, you know, when I was young, there was a lot of respect for clowning in rock music - look at Little Richard. It was a part of the whole thing, and I always also believed that it released the audience.

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.

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.

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.

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.

You can't have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can't get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses.

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.

Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.

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

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

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.

Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.

Your spoken voice is a part of it - not a big part of it, but it's something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what's otherwise difficult music.

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

Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.