Bruce Springsteen quotes: The Boss’s best sayings about singing, songwriting, success, and more.
“I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.”
“There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king.”
“Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny.”
“When it comes to luck, you make your own.”
“We honor our parents by carrying their best forward and laying the rest down. By fighting and taming the demons that laid them low and now reside in us.”
“The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.”
“I’ve found that giving 100% to your job isn’t the same as giving 100% of your life to your job. Very often when I thought I was giving 100% of my life to my job, I was simply obsessing over something.”
“You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.”
“I looked at myself, and I just said, ‘Well, you know, I can sing, but I’m not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well, but I’m not the greatest guitar player in the world.’ So I said, ‘Well, if I’m going to project an individuality, it’s going to have to be in my writing.'”
“We all have stories we’re living and telling ourselves.”
“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.”
“Talk about a dream, try to make it real.”
“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.”
“And whether you’re drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.”
“Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.”
“There’s a beauty in work and I love it, all different kinds of work. That’s what I consider it. Rock is my job, and that’s my work. And I work my ass off, you know.”
“I never knew anybody who was unhappy with their job and was happy with their life. It’s your sense of purpose.”
“There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music, but it is a critical, questioning, and often angry patriotism.”
“The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.”
“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.”
“I’m always in search of something, in search of losing myself to the music.”
“The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin’ all the time, always playin’ the clown.”
“Most bands don’t work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.”
“I couldn’t worry about whether I’m gonna make it onstage or not. You can’t. You just gotta do it. And if you do, you do, and if you don’t, you don’t, and then something else happens. That’s the point of the live performance.”
“If you’re good, you’re always looking over your shoulder.”
“I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen’s fairs, policemen’s balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I’d seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.”
“If you don’t connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you’re disappearing, you feel like you’re fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it’s an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with.”
“I believe when your children are born that you are reborn in some fashion.”
“When you’re on stage you have a certain faith that somebody’s gonna yell somethin’ back. Some nights it’s louder than other nights and some nights they do, and on some songs they don’t. But that’s the idea. I think when you begin to expect a reaction from an audience, it’s a mistake.”
“It’s not the time in your life, it’s the life in your time.”
“When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.”
“The moment you begin to depend on audience reaction, you’re doing the wrong thing. You’re doin’ it wrong, it’s a mistake, it’s not right. You can’t allow yourself, no matter what, to depend on them.”
“At the end of every hard day, people find some reason to believe.”
“I had tried to go to college, and I didn’t really fit in. I went to a real narrow-minded school where people gave me a lot of trouble, and I was hounded off the campus. I just looked different and acted different, so I left school.”
“The future is now. Roll up your sleeves and let your passion flow. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.”
“Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk.”
“I always look terrible before the show. That’s when I feel worst. And after the show it’s like a million bucks. Simple as that. You feel a little tired but you never feel better. Nothing makes me feel as good as those hours between when you walk offstage, until I go to bed. That’s the hours that I live for.”
“There’s people that get a chance to do the kind of work that changes the world, and make things really different. And there’s the kind that just keeps the world from falling apart.”
“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.”
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