"'Darkness on the Edge of Town' came out of a huge body of work that had tons of very happy songs."

"The wonderful thing about rock music is even if you hate the other person, sometimes you need him more, you know. In other words if he's the guy that made that sound, he's the guy that made that sound, and without that guy making that sound, you don't have a band, you know."

"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."

"The E Street band casts a pretty wide net. Our influences go all the way back to the early primitive garage music, and also, we've had everything in the band from jazz players to Kansas City trumpet players to Nils Lofgren, one of the great rock guitarists in the world."

"Walk tall, or baby don't walk at all."

"I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them."

"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."

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

"The audiences are there as a result of my history with the band but also as a result of my being able to reach people with a tune."

"I have my ideas, I have my music and I also just enjoy showing off, so that's a big part of it. Also, I like to get up onstage and behave insanely or express myself physically, and the band can get pretty silly."

"Your spoken voice is a part of it - not a big part of it, but it's something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what's otherwise difficult music."

"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."

"Plus, you know, when I was young, there was a lot of respect for clowning in rock music - look at Little Richard. It was a part of the whole thing, and I always also believed that it released the audience."

"But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find."

"I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18."

"Yeah, my son likes a lot of guitar bands. He gave me something the other day which was really good. He'll burn a CD for me full of things that he has, so he's a pretty good call if I want to check some of that stuff out... The other two aren't quite into that yet."

"From the beginning, I imagined I would have a long work life."

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

"I didn't know if it would be a success-ful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter."

"I always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children."

"I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along."

"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."

"In the early years, I found a voice that was my voice and also partly my father's voice. But isn't that what you always do? Why do kids at 5 years old go into the closet and put their daddy's shoes on? Hey, my kids do it."

"I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't."

"Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves."

"When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s."

"Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous."

"No, I always felt that amongst my core fans- because there was a level of popularity that I had in the mid '80s that was sort of a bump on the scale- they fundamentally understood the values that are at work in my work."

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

"The only thing I can say about having this type of success is that you can get yourself in trouble because basically the world is set open for you. People will say yes to anything you ask, so it's basically down to you and what you want or need."

"The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with."

"In America everything's about who's number one today."

"If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it."

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

"I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention."

"But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention."

"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."

"I think politics come out of psychology."

"Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield."

"If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know."

"An outgrowth of having a long career is that I have a lot of interesting things around that I get to revisit, and someday get to the place where they become something that I want to do next."

"When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways."

"I'm not in any rush. I'm not somebody who, if I write a song, I get it out. That's not something I've ever really quite done."

"I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day."

"You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records."

"You can't start a fire Worrying 'bout your little world falling apart This gun's for hire Even if we're just dancing in the dark"

"I had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns."

"Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true, But you and I know what this world can do. So let's make our steps clear so the other may see. And I'll wait for you...should I fall behind wait for me."

"I have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs."

"The name 'Boss' started with people that worked for me... It was not meant like Boss, capital B, it was meant like 'Boss, where's my dough this week?' And it was sort of just a term among friends. I never really liked it."