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.
Steve Earle
My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.
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.
To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.
You can't write if you don't read.
In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history.
Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.
I still write more songs about girls than anything else.
San Antonio is like a military town. It's like literally - when I was growing up there, there were five Air Force bases, plus Fort Sam Houston. I was always sort of near the military.
Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.
Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.
It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.
The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.
I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.
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.
You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.
I love 'Harry Potter.' I love those books. That started because I lived with a woman who had kids who were, like, 10 and 7 when they moved in with me.
I love baseball. I'll probably end up one of those old farts who go to spring training in Florida every year and drive from game to game all day.
I'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.
I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.
The idea that murder victims' families are best served by continuing the cycle of violence is something that I consider to be not only a lie, but criminally negligent. You lie to victims' families when you tell them they're going to receive closure if they participate in the process and witness the execution of a human being.
The human race survived the Inquisition. We can survive. It's like the Anne Frank quote: 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good at heart.' Given what happened to her, it's one of the miracles of the world that she said that.
Truman Capote is really an interesting cat.
My spiritual system is 12-step programs. That's the only one I've ever had. I didn't have one before that.
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.
My son was diagnosed with autism. He's OK, he makes eye contact, but he doesn't talk. He needs eight hours a day of very intensive school, and you wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much it costs.
New Orleans is a unique environment.
Becoming interested in poetics got me interested in theater. Theater is supposed to be poetry, you know, before it's anything else. It just doesn't fly if it isn't musical.
I'm a country singer, and I'm comfortable with that. But why does a country singer have to play only on country radio or a rock singer only on a rock station? I still don't understand why it's that big a deal.
Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.
I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore.
I am connected to the past in a way that keeps me going forward. Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.
You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.
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.
I promise you that I did not become an addict because of anything to do with the behavior of either of my parents. Everybody has to make their own choices.
All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.
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.
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.
My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.
I don't care what's happening in the mainstream of country music. I haven't in a long time.
I don't usually read reviews.
If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.
I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect.
I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.
If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.
Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.
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.
Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes.
My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.
