Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.
Bruce Springsteen
When it comes to luck, you make your own.
I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.
It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company.
Talk about a dream, try to make it real.
A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.
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.
There is something about the melody of 'Thunder Road' that just suggests 'new day.' It suggests morning; it suggests something opening up.
The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad.
The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.
You can't be afraid of getting old. Old is good, if you're gathering in life. Our band is good at understanding that equation.
Anyone who's grown up or lived on the Jersey Shore knows the place is unique.
If you listen to the great Beatle records, the earliest ones where the lyrics are incredibly simple. Why are they still beautiful? Well, they're beautifully sung, beautifully played, and the mathematics in them is elegant. They retain their elegance.
Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire.
Somebody who can reckon with the past, who can live with the past in the present, and move towards the future - that's fabulous.
In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.
When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do.
Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.
I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.
Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.
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're always in a box, and you're an escape artist if you do what I do - or if you're a creative person, period. You build your box, and then you escape from it. You build another one, and you escape from it. That's ongoing.
If you're good, you're always looking over your shoulder.
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.
We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves.
I was an insecure young man. So my need for total dedication from the people I was working with was very great. Those things were tempered as time passed by.
I looked at myself, and I just said, 'Well, you know, I can sing, but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well, but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world.' So I said, 'Well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing.'
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.
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.
There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.
I suppose when you do it correctly, a good introduction and a good outro makes the song feel like it's coming out of something and then evolving into something.
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.
Adult life is dealing with an enormous amount of questions that don't have answers. So I let the mystery settle into my music. I don't deny anything, I don't advocate anything, I just live with it.
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.
The name 'Boss' started with people that worked for me... It was not meant like Boss, capital B, it was meant like 'Boss, where's my dough this week?' And it was sort of just a term among friends. I never really liked it.
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.
I think politics come out of psychology.
The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown.
Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.
From the beginning, I imagined I would have a long work life.
If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.
I guess my view of America is of a real bighearted country, real compassionate.
When you get fat and lose your hunger. That is when you know the sellout has happened.
But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.
The E Street band casts a pretty wide net. Our influences go all the way back to the early primitive garage music, and also, we've had everything in the band from jazz players to Kansas City trumpet players to Nils Lofgren, one of the great rock guitarists in the world.
Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.
I'm always in search of something, in search of losing myself to the music.
I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.
I have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs.
