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.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.
– Bruce Springsteen
The only thing I can say about having this type of success is that you can get yourself in trouble because basically the world is set open for you. People will say yes to anything you ask, so it's basically down to you and what you want or need.
– Bruce Springsteen
The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
I think that is what film and art and music do they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.
– Bruce Springsteen
I think politics come out of psychology.
– Bruce Springsteen
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. I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn't do very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn't fit in my intelligence was elsewhere.
– Bruce Springsteen
Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.
– Bruce Springsteen
Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.
– Bruce Springsteen
And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.
– Bruce Springsteen
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.