Quotes from Steve Earle

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.

Music was very influential on me as a kid.

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

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.

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.

Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

You know I ain't never prayed before 'Cause it always seemed to me That prayin's the same as beggin' Lord, I don't take no charity.

I have spent most of my life (like most people) avoiding transcendence at all costs, mainly because the shit hurts.

introduced Doc to the miracle of morphine. From that very first shot it was as if he'd discovered the one vital ingredient that God had left out when He'd sent Doc kicking and screaming into the cold, cruel world.

Someday I'm finally gonna let go 'cause I know there's a better way, and I wanna know what's over that rainbow...I'm gonna get out of here someday...

T]he death penalty dehumanizes everyone on both sides of the equation. It dimishes everyone it touches. It is something we just shouldn't do.

Their life together was filled with bright mornings and starlit nights that consistently outshone the darker times between. Even those hard days were times of learning when their differences became gifts from one to the other.

She more than likely came from good enough people. Poor, honest, hard-working folks that never got ahead but did all right as long as they kept their heads down and didn't study too much on what they didn't have.

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.

As he left room 817, Nguyen turned for one final look before he allowed the soldiers to enter and remove the body. Nguyen thought that the American looked almost serene, lying there, his face bathed in the first rays of the sunlight of a new day, the sound of his laughter still suspended like dandelion seeds in the air nearby, resonating in harmony with that of a former enemy's.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 don't think I'm a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it's in my fabric.

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