Born To Run Quotes
"With my belly to the stone, alongside the tiny anthills that pop up volcanically where dirt and concrete meet, my world sprawls on into infinity."
"Here, in epic 'gutter ball' tournaments, I slammed the first of a hundred Pinky rubber balls into my sidewalk's finely shaped curb."
"Beneath its slumbering arms, on slow summer nights we sit, my pals and I, the cavalry at dusk, waiting for the evening bells of the ice-cream man and bed."
"We live, literally, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, with the priest’s rectory, the nuns’ convent, the St. Rose of Lima Church and grammar school all just a football’s toss away."
"My family has five houses branching out in an L shape, anchored on the corner by the redbrick church."
"I hear my grandmother’s voice calling me in, the last sound of the long day."
"I step up onto our front porch, our windows glowing in the summer twilight; I let the heavy front door open and then close behind me."
"Time passed; my father quit school at sixteen, working as a floor boy in the Karagheusian Rug Mill."
"My birth returned to her a life of purpose. She seized on me with a vengeance."
"It’s comforting; it unites the town in a common sensory experience; it’s good industry, like the roaring rug mill that fills our ears, brings work and signals our town’s vitality."
"I thought this was the coolest thing I’d ever seen up close and I immediately returned home and tried to emulate the look."
"I opened up the book, went to 'Greensleeves,' read the opening E-minor chord (only needs two fingers!) and set back to work. It was a beginning. A real beginning."
"This was my first rock ’n’ roll song. It was good-bye to 'lawn boy' and the only real job I would hold my entire life. 'Well shake it up, baby!'"
"It sounded awful, distorted beyond all recognition. The amp had one control, a volume knob. It was about the size of a large bread box but I was in the game."
"Being able to play a little was one thing; playing 'together' was something else... uncharted territory."
"We were the instrumental kings of our local scene (challenged up Route 9 by the Victorians). They were real musicians, teachers at Mike Diehl’s music school, with good equipment and matching suits."
"I was knocked out cold for thirty minutes, all the way from Freehold to the hospital in Neptune. I was hauled into the emergency room and had to have my clothes cut off of me due to the swelling of my leg."
"That was the last straw. I screamed and swore at him. It was the only time I told my dad I hated—HATED—him."
"The first night we were booked at a high school dance opening for the Chevelles. Being booked to play at your high school was the top, top gig in town."
"I finally felt a musical future in front of me."
"We’d been up together for three solid days. We looked at each other, exhausted, shook hands and went our own ways."
"I was slipping over the streets of my childhood, no longer a painful player in my or my town’s history but a passing and impassive observer."
"This town, my town, would never leave me, and I could never completely leave it, but I would never live in Freehold again."
"I would return and return, in dreams and out, waiting for a new ending to a book that had been written a long time ago."
"The Bruce Springsteen Band, even billed as 'formerly Steel Mill,' did not attract the same life-sustaining numbers my old band did."
"It’s not that I didn’t expect to come up against superior talent; that happens, it’s the way God planned it."
"I’d declared democracy and band names dead after Steel Mill. I was leading the band, playing, singing and writing everything we did."
"I was a faux hippie (free love was all right), but the counterculture stood by definition in opposition to the conservative blue-collar experience I’d had."
"I managed to get arrested hitchhiking (my specialty) on the California freeway."
"From the time I picked up a guitar, I’d never taken a dime from my parents, and I wasn’t about to start now."
"We had imported a drummer from Richmond, rehearsed him thoroughly and were ready to gig."
"In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream."
"The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways."
"Tramps like us, baby we were born to run."
"You can sing about your misery, the world’s misery, your most devastating experiences, but there is something in the gathering of souls that blows the blues away."
"That’s what’ll help you make crucial sense and powerful music as time passes, giving you the skills that may also keep you alive, creatively and physically."
"It’s not easy moving forward together; people get set in their ways, their perceptions cut in stone."
"You never forget the first time you hear your song on the radio."
"I’ve left enough sweat on stages around the world to fill at least one of the seven seas."
"The failure of so many of rock’s artists to outlive their expiration date of a few years, make more than a few great albums and avoid water treading, or worse, I felt was due to the misfit nature of those drawn to the profession."
"Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways."
"The music revives itself over and over again in that form, primitive rockabilly, punk, hard soul and early rap."
"The heart of rock will always remain a primal world of action."
"Youth and death have always been an intoxicating combination for the myth makers left amongst the living."
"The radio had kept me alive and breathing throughout my teens."
"Music on the radio is a shared fever dream, a collective hallucination, a secret amongst millions and a whisper in the whole country’s ear."
"We were more than an idea, an aesthetic. We are a philosophy, a collective, with a professional code of honor."
"It was my lifeline to the rest of humanity in the days when those connections were tough for me to make."
"In these songs were the beginnings of the characters whose lives I would trace in my work for the next four decades."
"The poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be."
"I wanted my music grounded in my life, in the life of my family and in the blood and lives of the people I’d known."
"The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head."
"When the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three."
"What makes something great may also be one of its weaknesses, just like in people."
"I was not comfortable with someone standing to make a quick mil off of my demise."
"If I lose and have nothing when this is over, you can still drop me with my guitar by parachute anywhere in America; I’ll walk to the nearest roadhouse, find a pickup band and light up your night."
"There is but one life. Nobody likes that . . . but there’s just one. And we’re lucky to have it."
"You miked the band and the room. You heard the band and the room. The sonic characteristics of the room were essential in the quality and personality of your recording."
"Our records were infrequent and by now I’d set up my audience to expect more than business as usual."
"I wanted playfulness, good times, but also an underlying philosophical seriousness, a code of living, fusing it all together and making it more than just a collection of my ten latest songs."
"I wouldn’t suggest this approach for everyone. Needless to say, it has its pretensions, but I was still defining myself and was inspired by artists who created self-aware, self-contained worlds on their albums, and then invited their fans to discover them."
"I was aware of Woody’s name, and of course, 'This Land Is Your Land,' but as a pure student of hit radio, I was mostly unaware of the details of his life and his music."
"I wanted the listener to hear my characters think, to feel their thoughts, their choices."
"There was a lot of sadness, at what had happened, at what had been done and what I’d done to myself."
"The price I paid for the time lost was just that. Time lost."
"We’re all honorary citizens of that primal forest, and our burdens and weaknesses always remain. They are an ineradicable part of ourselves, they are our humanity."
"But when we bring light, the day becomes ours and their power to determine our future is diminished."
"In solidarity, I, sporting my Born in the USA do-rag, also refuse to remove my head scarf."
"WE’RE OUTTA HERE! SCREW YOU, FASCIST MOUSE! WE’RE GOING TO KNOTT’S BERRY FARM!"
"A thrill’s a thrill, and I’ve occasionally taken mine where I found them."
"I wanted something serious. I wanted to get married."
"I operated best within a semi-monogamous system."
"The old man finally wanted me around the house."
"The entire show was broadcast on state television with the exception of my short speech about the wall."
"What I wanted most was all eyes off me."
"The power of choice, of a life, a lover, a place to stand, will be there to be called upon."
"We created a life and a love fit for a couple of emotional outlaws."
"We are one short breath of night and day, then dirt and stars, but we’re holding the new morning."
"I felt the rage of my ambivalence, my lifelong low ambient hum of discontent, silent."
"Making life fills you with humility, balls, arrogance, a mighty manliness, confidence, terror, joy, dread, love."
"Patti and I’d made one and one equal three. That’s rock ’n’ roll."
"I knew something very, very different and perhaps difficult was called for and Patti was it."
"It’s a boy! Evan James Springsteen is born."
"The room is filled with the light of blood spirits past, present and future."
"The simple mix of a white and black crowd of this size brought an urgency to our appearance."
"I stood, gathering in what I’d just heard, then sat heavily on the edge of our bed."
"I watched him rise and fall with each breath I take."
"I’d let Patti know me like I’d never done with anyone else."
"I’d always had a lot of ideas about the who, what, when, where and why of my romantic choices that would prove in the long run irrelevant."
"What was the name of the girl who won? What did she do to win?"
"I wanted to experiment with other musicians."
"I became not just a friend and employer for some, but also banker and daddy."
"I was working on new music in a new land with a new love."
"We’d been together for three years, survived a burst of scandal, and already had a child and another one on the way."
"Our life in Los Angeles had settled into a comfortable rhythm."
"The night had been broken by their 'early alarm' howling and the mattress beneath us quaking."
"You can get killed just for living in your American skin."
"We’re baptized in these waters and in each other’s blood."
"There's a dream where the contents are invisible, but the spirit moves through, animating all it touches."
"My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American dream."