Bruce Springsteen Quotes

If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with.

On a good day this is how we live. This is love. This is what life is. The possibility of finding root, safety and nurturing in a new season.

She went away, she cut me like a knife Hello beautiful thing, maybe you could save my life In just a glance, down here on magic street Loves a fool's dance And I ain't got much sense, but I still got my feet.

The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit.

Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose.

So I bought a forty-four magnum, it was solid steel cast, and in the blessed name of Elvis, well I just let it blast 'til my TV lay in pieces.

You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.

Sherrif when the man pulls that switch, Sir
And snaps my poor head back,
You make sure my pretty baby
Is sittin' right there on my lap.

I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.

The wonderful thing about rock music is even if you hate the other person, sometimes you need him more, you know. In other words if he's the guy that made that sound, he's the guy that made that sound, and without that guy making that sound, you don't have a band, you know.

Badlands, you got to live it everyday, let the broken hearts stand as the price you've got to pay.

When life comes knockin', it's the heartbroken doo-wop singer who understands regret and the price of loving, the hard-living soul man who understands "I take what I want, I'm a bad go-getter, yeah..." and the Motown divas, men and women, who know you've got to play a little bit of the white man's/rich man's game. You have to make thoughtful compromises that don't sell out your soul, that let you reach just a little bit higher until your moment comes and then you set the rules. This was the credo all along Route 9 and you'd better understand it or else you would die an ugly musical death while risking bodily injury on Saturday night.

We're here to re-dedicate you to The Power, The Passion, The Mystery, and The Ministry of Rock and Roll.

Wendy, let me in, I wanna be your friend. I wanna guard your dreams and visions.

I'm just tired and bored with myself.

I would spend my life on the road logging hundreds of thousands of miles and my story was always the same. . . man comes to town, detonates; man leaves town and drives off into the evening; fade to black. Just the way I like it.

The wise men were all fools, what to do?

I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive ... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses - that's not the American dream. That's the booby prize, in the end. Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them - if, when you achieve them, you believe that this is the end in and of itself - then you've been suckered in. Because those are the consolation prizes, if you're not careful, for selling yourself out, or letting the best of yourself slip away.

The light from the oncoming train focuses the mind.

It was time to call on my old paisan Steve Van Zandt.

Here everybody has a neighbor Everybody has a friend Everybody has a reason to begin again.

A dream of life comes to me, like a catfish dancing on the end of the line.

You've got to be able to hold a lot of contradictory ideas in your mind without going nuts. I feel like to do my job right, when I walk out on stage I've got to feel like it's the most important thing in the world. Also I've got to feel like, well, it's only rock and roll. Somehow you've got to believe both of those things.

We said we'd walk together baby come what may.That come the twilight should we lose our way.If as we're walkin a hand should slip free,I'll wait for you
And should I fall behind,Wait for me.

We struggled together and sometimes with one another. We took care of one another. In the end, we kept faith in each other.

I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that's the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up - either religious or social laws - become meaningless.

History was a subject that bored me in middle and high school, but I devoured it now. It seemed to hold some of the essential pieces to the identity questions I was asking. How could I know who I was if I didn't have a clue as to where I'd personally and collectively come from? What does it mean to be an American is all caught up in what did it mean to be one. Only some combination of those answers could lead you to what it might mean to be an American.

On any given night, what allows me to get to that higher ground is the audience.

All people have is hope. That's what brings the next day and
whatever that day may bring. A hope grounded in the real world of
living, friendship, work, family.

Italian cooking again. The power of the "pinch of death" has

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.

With a boulder on my shoulder
Feeling kinda older, I tripped the merry-go-round.

Now you play the loving woman, I play the faithful man

Born down in a dead man's town; The first kick I took was when I hit the ground. You end up like a dog that's been beat too much 'Til you spend half your life just covering up.

It's hard to be a saint in the city.

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.

Judge said, what you got in your defense son? Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.

The question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq isn't a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic question, it's an American one. Protecting the democracy that we ask our sons and daughters to die for is our responsibility and our trust. Demanding accountability from our leaders is our job as citizens. It's the American way. So may the truth win out.

I've had an experience through music that has touched almost every part of me. It educated me in ways that I didn't get educated in school. So we try to lay on a bit of that, through being funny, being serious, playing hard.

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.

There's a beauty in work and I love it, all different kinds of work. That's what I consider it. Rock is my job, and that's my work. And I work my ass off, you know.

We've got no fairytale ending, in God's hands our fate is complete. Your heaven's here in my heart, our love's this dust beneath my feet.

There is no evidence of the soul except in its sudden absence. A nothingness enters, taking place where something was before.

First, you write for yourself... always, to make sense of experience and the world around you. It's one of the ways I stay sane. Our stories, our books, our films are how we cope with the random trauma-inducing chaos of life as it plays.

No, you can't tell people anything, you've got to show 'em.

The criminal ineptitude makes you furious.

Nothing matters in the whole wide world when you're in love with a Jersey girl.

When I look at myself, I don't see the man I wanted to be.

The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that. I think that Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power.

An unfulfilled life makes a hard man.

I never felt I had enough personal style to pursue being just a guitarist.

Just sitting back trying to recapture a little of the glory of ... Well, the time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of Glory days - yeah, they'll pass you by, Glory days - in the wink of a young girl's eye.

Out of the east on an Irish stallion came bounty hunter Dan His heart quickened and burdened by the need to get his man He found Pete peacefully fishing by the river, pulled his gun and got the drop He said, Pete, you think you've changed, but you have not.

I spot a little stranger standing across the room, my brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room.

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.

I guess my view of America is of a real bighearted country, real compassionate.

There's people that get a chance to do the kind of work that changes the world, and make things really different. And there's the kind that just keeps the world from falling apart.

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.

The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence.

They say "ya gotta stay hungry" ...
Hey Baby ... I'm just about starvin' tonight!

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

Now, some guys' five minutes are worth other guys' fifty years, and while burning out in one brilliant supernova will send record sales through the roof, leave you living fast, dying young, leaving a beautiful corpse, there is something to be said for living. Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled and here.

That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now. There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king.

We are one sour breath of night and day, then dirt and stars, but we're holding the new morning.

Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.

Blood moon risin' in a sky of black dust, tell me baby, who do you trust?

But it's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin And can't stand the company. Every fool's got a reason to feelin' sorry for himself And turn his heart to stone. Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell And I feel like I'm comin' home.

I think politics come out of psychology.

The hungry and the haunted explode in a rock'n'roll band.

Think of it this way: performing is like sprinting while screaming for three, four minutes. And then you do it again. And then you do it again. And then you walk a little, shouting the whole time. And so on. Your adrenaline quickly overwhelms your conditioning.

That's what being a front man is all about - the idea of having something supple underneath you, that machine that roars and can turn on a dime.

A good song gathers the years in. It's why you can sing it with such conviction 40 years after it's been written. A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.

When you have three teenagers, it gives a whole new meaning to "homeland security."

For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsibility, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in.

I wanted to be a voice that reflected experience and the world I lived in. So I knew in 1972 that to do this I would need to write very well and more individually than I had ever written before.

I know I'm good but I'm also a poser. That's artistic balance! In the second half of the century, "authenticity" would be what you made of it, a hall of mirrors. Put on the work shirt, young man. No big deal. As you get older, it won't concern you. It's just the lay of the land. In your youth, however, you are easy prey for the many tricks of the mind. At this moment, I know my mid is not at its most centered. I can tell because I'm afraid, and that's not my style; I don't need to be, but I am.

Meet me in a land of hopes and dreams.

A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be.

Writing about yourself is a funny business. At the end of the day it's just another story, the story you've chosen from the events of your life. I haven't told you "all" about myself. Discretion and the feelings of others don't allow it. But in a project like this, the writer has made one promise: to show the reader his mind. In these pages I've tried to do that.

REVIEW! We had been recognized by a big-time newspaper music critic as Jersey badasses gone to teach those West Coast sissy boys something about THE ROCK!

Tonight I'm stepping lightly and I'm feeling no pain.

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.

You use to drive me wild, but lately you get your kicks from just knocking me down, down, down.

It's a town full of losers
And I'm pulling out of here to win.

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.

We could survive as musicians only on our little sliver of the East Coast. We had to get back.

Walk tall, or baby don't walk at all.

The Super Bowl helped me sell a few new records and probably put a few extra fannies in the seats that tour. But what it was really about was this: I felt my band remained one of the mightiest in the land and I wanted you to know it. We

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.

From the beginning, I imagined I would have a long work life.

You can beat on your chest, hell, any monkey can.

Like a Rolling Stone" gave me the faith that a true, unaltered, uncompromised vision could be broadcast to millions, changing minds, enlivening spirits, bringing red blood to the anemic American pop landscape and delivering a warning, a challenge that could become an essential part of the American conversation. This was music that could both stir the heart of your fellow countrymen and awaken the mind of a shy, lost fifteen-year-old in a small New Jersey town.

You ask for your audience's investment in your music; you're in a relationship with them. And their relationship with the E Street Band is separate from whatever else I might do. I like the idea of us being something that people rely on.

Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see? Trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be And after all this time to find we're just like all the rest Stranded in the park and forced to confess To hiding on the Backstreets.

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

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

I was in my late 20s, in the process of shaping my musical outlook and what I wanted it to be about, when I first encountered Woody Guthrie.

You can't start a fire without a spark

I had tried to go to college, and I didn't really fit in. I went to a real narrow-minded school where people gave me a lot of trouble, and I was hounded off the campus - I just looked different and acted different, so I left school.

I got a house full of Rembrandts and priceless art, and all the little girls they wanna tear me apart.