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

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.

— Bruce Springsteen

Music was my way of keeping people from looking through and around me. I wanted the heavies to know I was around.

— Bruce Springsteen

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

We're here to re-dedicate you to The Power, The Passion, The Mystery, and The Ministry of Rock and Roll.

— Bruce Springsteen

A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.

— Bruce Springsteen

At this point, I don’t need my records to be Number One or sell as many as this person or that person. That’s not fundamentally important — I don’t believe that sustains you.

— Bruce Springsteen

In the third grade a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that’s where I belonged.

— Bruce Springsteen

There ain't a note that I play on stage that can’t be traced back directly to my mother and father.

— Bruce Springsteen

The first day I can remember looking into a mirror and being able to stand what I saw was the day I had a guitar in my hand.

— Bruce Springsteen

You ride in a limousine the first time, it’s a big thrill but after that it’s just a stupid car.

— Bruce Springsteen

There is something about the melody of 'Thunder Road' that just suggests 'new day.' It suggests morning; it suggests something opening up.

— 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.

— Bruce Springsteen

The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad.

— Bruce Springsteen

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

— Bruce Springsteen

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

— 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

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

— 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

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you alive and alert! Believe you are the baddest ass in town – and [that] you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have – and then remember it’s only rock’ n’ roll.

— Bruce Springsteen