Explore Quotes by Bruce Springsteen

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

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

I think politics come out of psychology.

You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you're making those connections with your audience then they're going to go right along with it.

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.

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

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

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.

When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.

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

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.

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.

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.

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

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

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

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

It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company.

I want a thousand guitars . . .

Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk.