Steve Earle
Steve Earle

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

You can't write if you don't read.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

They say death and taxes are the only things that are inevitable. The truth is, you can not pay your taxes. I've done it, and there's consequences, but it can be done. Death you're not going to get out of, and you kind of got to deal with it.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

New Orleans is a unique environment.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

I love 'Harry Potter.' I love those books. That started because I lived with a woman who had kids who were, like, 10 and 7 when they moved in with me.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

I still write more songs about girls than anything else.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

At home, I'm lucky if I can write three or four hours before the phone starts ringing and the kids want to go to soccer.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

The human race survived the Inquisition. We can survive. It's like the Anne Frank quote: 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good at heart.' Given what happened to her, it's one of the miracles of the world that she said that.

Steve Earle
Steve Earle

You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.