Steve Earle

Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.

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.

New Orleans is a unique environment.

We're so terrified of death in Western culture that we have to make up a myth of an afterlife. I think there's something to be said for living your life very mindful of the fact that you're going to die because I think you carry yourself differently. It doesn't have to be this big, negative bummer.

I love e-books. I can carry the complete works of William Shakespeare around with me all the time. Just think about that. Whether I'm on an airplane or wherever. Being able to have a library in your back pocket basically is something I support.

I mainly read non-fiction, and that's probably because I have a huge amount of insecurity about my lack of education and the things I don't know.

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.

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 still write more songs about girls than anything else.

Every country that's ever been the most powerful country in the world ceases to be the most powerful country in the world at some point.

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

It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.

If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes.

You can't write if you don't read.

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

Having a child at 55... that's optimism.

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 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.

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.

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.

If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.

The creative core of New York has never been native New Yorkers; it's people from all over the world.

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.

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

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.

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.

I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect.

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.

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

I'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.

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.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

My spiritual system is 12-step programs. That's the only one I've ever had. I didn't have one before that.

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.

I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.

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.

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.

Funerals are a pagan rite. There's not any doubt about it.

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.

Truman Capote is really an interesting cat.

Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.

My audience is, you know, pinkos in big cities.

What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

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.

I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.

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.

Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.

You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.

I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.

I don't usually read reviews.

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.

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.

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.

I've been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now, and I never get tired of the view.

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.

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.