Steven Van Zandt

“What the world needs is an Emergency Boss. An Emergency Czar. An Emergency Commander. A true Master Of Disaster. One person completely responsible for the anticipation, immediate reconnaissance, and urgent execution of rescue and relief efforts around the world.”

“Go out and support your local rock n' roll band.”

“In 'The Sopranos,' these guys know their best years are behind them. They have nostalgia for their old traditions. In their minds, they're looking for a time when loyalty mattered, community mattered. E Street is about community, too. People are looking for something real.”

“Believe me, if Donald Trump didn't have some point that he's making, hitting home with people, he could not have come this far - as much as a showman as he may be.”

“I don't wake up every day and just write to write. I only write with purpose.”

“I've always considered the government taking one out of every two dollars I earn absolute tyranny.”

“I am interested in the interaction of a group of people who have a common goal, or a common obsession, each contributing something unique to make something greater than the sum of its parts. I don't know why, but from day one, that has interested me.”

“Every successful person needs to have at least one person in their life who's not afraid of them.”

“You ask people to fall in love with you. To need you. To want you. To buy your records and come see you. You have an emotional contract with people. To break up is to violate that contract.”

“Rock n' roll is a participatory sport.”

“'Soulfire' is a collection of stuff I've done in the past. Each song is an element of who I am: There's a doo-wop song on the album; a blues song, R&B and some jazz. For people who are going to be hearing me for the first time, it's an introduction to who I am.”

“I'm a real band guy, you know? I'm really good at certain things, and the band stuff is one of them.”

“Sometimes there's no qualitative difference between two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half hour shows. It's just a matter of how long you do it. It's not like the show must be three hours and 30 minutes to work. That's just not the case.”

“When I was younger, I went through the windshield of a car ,and my hair didn't grow back right. I had been wearing scarves occasionally, and I decided that I didn't want to deal with wigs and things, so I just stumbled onto my thing.”

“The first rule of rock and roll is it's all about live. Then you have to learn a second craft, which is making records. It should go in that order.”

“First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong.”

“As most of the population suffers through life, barely surviving, disappointed and confused day after day, hopeless, wondering what happened to their strong and beautiful country, it is in the media's power to restore, if not some of our quality of life, at least a bit of our peace of mind.”

“You're either on the Republican team or the Democratic team, and all that matters is that your team wins. Judging by history, regardless of which team wins, the people always lose.”

“I'm very, very proud to have been at what I feel are two of the pivotal moments in this whole new Golden Era of television - one being 'The Sopranos' with HBO and now with Netflix expanding that whole HBO concept to the world and making it more of a global thing. It's been wonderful to witness that from those two vantage points.”

“I think I'm one of the few people who have experienced New Jersey becoming fashionable twice in a lifetime.”