170 Top Quotes By Bruce Springsteen That You Don’t Want To Miss

...The beat of her heart, the slow burning away...of the bitter fires of the devil's arcade.

  

It ain’t no secret No secret my friend You can get killed just for living In your American skin

  

The older you get, the more it means.

  

Now I just act like I don't remember; Mary acts like she don't care.

  

Blame it on the lies that killed us. Blame it on the truth that ran us down.

  

A moment comes when you cash in whatever credibility a guy can have who plays and sings rock songs for a living, and you put your chips where you think they might do some good.

  

If people are sick and hurting and lost, I guess it falls on everybody to address those problems in some fashion. Because injustice, and the price of that injustice, falls on everyone's heads.

  

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.

  

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.

  

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

  

Now I work down at the carwash Where all it ever does is rain

  

The Clash were a major influence on my own music. They were the best rock 'n' roll band. Thanks, Joe.

  

Being an artist is this kind of occupation in which you have to make people care about your obsession.

  

One day we'll look back on this, and it will all seem funny

  

Mister, I ain't a boy, no I'm a man, and i believe in a promised land.

  

Show a little faith, there's magic in the night.

  

I'll love you with all the madness in my soul.

  

More than rich, more than famous, more than happy...I wanted to be great.

  

Cause down the shore everything's all right

  

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

  

Strenght-faith-hope-love

  

You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.

  

The poets down here don't write nothin' at all, they just stand back and let it all be...

  

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

  

You can't kill your way to security and you can't lead by scaring people.

  

Is there anybody alive out there?

  

Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold We swore blood brothers against the wind I'm ready to grow young again

  

I'm ready to grow young again

  

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.

  

I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.

  

For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive

  

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.

  

Talk about a dream, try to make it real

  

You'll walk with me out on the wire, cuz baby, I'm just a scared and lonely rider, but I gotta know how it feels... I want to know love is wild, babe, I want to know love is real.

  

God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of.

  

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

  

It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.

  

Is a dream a lie if it don't come true? Or is it something worse?

  

She's a walkin', talkin' reason to live.

  

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

  

The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.

  

Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true, But you and I know what this world can do. So let's make our steps clear so the other may see. And I'll wait for you...should I fall behind wait for me.

  

You can't start a fire Worrying 'bout your little world falling apart This gun's for hire Even if we're just dancing in the dark

  

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

  

Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.

  

I think I created my particular stage persona out of my dad's life, and perhaps I even built it to suit him to some degree.

  

I don't think people go to musicians for their political points of view. I think your political point of view is circumstances and then how you were nurtured and brought up.

  

I think you have a limited amount of impact as an entertainer, performer, or musician.

  

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.

  

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.

  

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

  

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.

  

A good song gathers the years in. It's why you can sing it with such conviction 40 years after it's been written.

  

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.

  

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

  

The first thing that I do when I come out every night is to look at the faces in front of me, very individually.

  

I don't write demographically. I don't write a song to reach these people or those people.

  

All I try to do is to write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.

  

I was real good at music and real bad at everything else.

  

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

  

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.

  

The Jersey Shore is the kind of place where the policeman has a little cottage that might have been in the family for years and many other people call home.

  

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.

  

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 have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs.

  

I had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns.

  

You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records.

  

I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.

  

An outgrowth of having a long career is that I have a lot of interesting things around that I get to revisit, and someday get to the place where they become something that I want to do next.

  

I'm not in any rush. I'm not somebody who, if I write a song, I get it out. That's not something I've ever really quite done.

  

I think politics come out of psychology.

  

Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.

  

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 still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.

  

Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.

  

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.

  

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.

  

In America everything's about who's number one today.

  

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

  

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.

  

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.

  

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.

  

When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.

  

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

  

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 always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children.

  

I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.

  

I didn't know if it would be a success-ful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter.

  

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

  

I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.

  

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

  

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

  

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.

  

Plus, you know, when I was young, there was a lot of respect for clowning in rock music - look at Little Richard. It was a part of the whole thing, and I always also believed that it released the audience.

  

Your spoken voice is a part of it - not a big part of it, but it's something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what's otherwise difficult music.

  

I have my ideas, I have my music and I also just enjoy showing off, so that's a big part of it. Also, I like to get up onstage and behave insanely or express myself physically, and the band can get pretty silly.

  

The audiences are there as a result of my history with the band but also as a result of my being able to reach people with a tune.

  

It's always felt natural, because I'm generally very comfortable with people.

  

I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.

  

This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.