Born to Run QUOTES

41 " It didn’t take me long to figure it out: I didn’t want to meet the Beatles. I wanted to BE the Beatles. "

42 " When life comes knockin', it's the heartbroken doo-wop singer who understands regret and the price of loving, the hard-living soul man who understands "I take what I want, I'm a bad go-getter, yeah..." and the Motown divas, men and women, who know you've got to play a little bit of the white man's/rich man's game. You have to make thoughtful compromises that don't sell out your soul, that let you reach just a little bit higher until your moment comes and then you set the rules. This was the credo all along Route 9 and you'd better understand it or else you would die an ugly musical death while risking bodily injury on Saturday night. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

43 " Like a Rolling Stone” gave me the faith that a true, unaltered, uncompromised vision could be broadcast to millions, changing minds, enlivening spirits, bringing red blood to the anemic American pop landscape and delivering a warning, a challenge that could become an essential part of the American conversation. This was music that could both stir the heart of your fellow countrymen and awaken the mind of a shy, lost fifteen-year-old in a small New Jersey town. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

44 " Meaningless distraction drains you of the energy you should be placing into more serious things or using to simply enjoy the rewards of your labor. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

45 " It’s hard to imagine that Clarence was once a normal person, a college student, football player and bespectacled counselor at the Jamesburg State Home for Boys. He had a face that would look at home at any point in history. It was the face of an exotic emperor, an island king, a heavyweight boxer, a shaman, a chain-gang convict, a fifties bluesman and a deep soul survivor. It held one million secrets and none at all. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

46 " But if you have the talent, then will, ambition and the determination to expose yourself to new thoughts, counterargument, new influences, will strengthen and fortify your work, driving you closer to home. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

47 " In all psychological wars, it’s never over,, there’s just this day, this time, and a hesitant belief in your ability to change. It is not an arena where the unsure should go looking for absolutes and there are no permanent victories. It is about a living change, filled with the insecurities , the chaos, of our own personalities, and is always one step up, two steps back. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

48 " Children bring with them grace, patience, transcendence, second chances, rebirth and a reawakening of the love that’s in your heart and present in your home. They are God giving you another shot. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

49 " We are one sour breath of night and day, then dirt and stars, but we're holding the new morning. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

50 " This, I presented as my long and noisy prayer, my magic trick. Hoping it would rock your very soul and then pass on, its spirit rendered, to be read, heard, sung and altered by you and your blood, that it might strengthen and help make sense of your story. Go tell it. EPILOGUE A few weeks before Thanksgiving, a sunny late fall day springs upon Central Jersey. Sixty-degree "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

51 " The bride and her hero are whisked away in their long black limousine, the one that drops you off at the beginning of your life. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

52 " I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

53 " Off the road, life was a puzzle. Without "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

54 " I turn the corner off the highway onto a dark country road. I hit my high beams, scan the flat farm fields looking for deer. All clear, I twist the throttle as rushing into my arms comes home. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

55 " The heart of rock will always remain a primal world of action. The music revives itself over and over again in that form, primitive rockabilly, punk, hard soul and early rap. Integrating the world of thought and reflection with the world of primitive action is *not* a necessary skill for making great rock 'n' roll. Many of the music's most glorious moments feel as though they were birthed in an explosion of raw talent and creative instinct (some of them even were!). But ... if you want to burn bright, hard *and* long, you will need to depend on more than your initial instincts. You will need to develop some craft and a creative intelligence that will lead you *farther* when things get dicey. 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. 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 treading water, or worse, I felt was due to the misfit nature of those drawn to the profession. These were strong, addictive personalities, fired by compulsion, narcissism, license, passion and an inbred entitlement, all slammed over a world of fear, hunger and insecurity. That's a Molotov cocktail of confusion that can leave you unable to make, or resistant to making, the lead of consciousness a life in the field demands. After first contact knocks you on your ass, you'd better have a plan, for some preparedness and personal development will be required if you expect to hang around any longer than your fifteen minutes.

Now, some guys' five minutes are worth other guys' fifty years, and while burning out in one brilliant supernova will send record sales through the roof, leave you living fast, dying young, leaving a beautiful corpse, there *is* something to be said for living. Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled and *here*. I'll take Dylan; the pirate raiding party of the Stones; the hope-I-get-very-old-before-I-die, present live power of the Who; a fat, still-mesmerizing-until-his-death Brando—they all suit me over the alternative. I would've liked to have seen that last Michael Jackson show, a seventy-year-old Elvis reinventing and relishing in his talents, where Jimi Hendrix might've next taken the electric guitar, Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and all the others whose untimely deaths and lost talents stole something from the music I love, living on, enjoying the blessings of their gifts and their audience's regard. Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways. Plus, to those you've received so much from, so much joy, knowledge and inspiration, you wish life, happiness and peace. These aren't easy to come by. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

56 " No money shots! No shifting, grinding, joyfully thrusting crotch shots. It didn’t matter. It was all there in his eyes, his face, the face of a Saturday night jukebox Dionysus, the shimmying eyebrows and rocking band. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

57 " As a child you don't question your parents' choices. You accept them. They are justified by the godlike status of parenthood. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

58 " As a child you don’t question your parents’ choices. You accept them. They "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

59 " We honor our parents by carrying their best forward and laying the rest down. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run

60 " We remain in the air, the empty space, in the dusty roots and deep earth, in the echo and stories, the songs of the time and place we have inhabited. My clan, my blood, my place, my people. "

― Bruce Springsteen , Born to Run