Steve Earle Quotes

My experience is that I find myself having to constantly define myself to others, day-in, day-out. The quote that's helped me the most through that is from Toni Morrison's "Beloved" where she says, "Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined" - so I find myself defining myself for other people lest I be defined by others and stuck into some box where I don't particularly belong.

I've always wrestled against being typified in one way or another.

I had been in a place where I was letting too many people dictate who I should be and what I should be, and I was trying to make everybody happy to the point where it was just killing me. I'd completely lost myself. It's kind of funny now that people think I've completely changed myself for Marilyn Manson, when this is actually the first time in my life that I took a stand and said, "This is who I am and this is who I've always wanted to be, and I'm finally with somebody who lets me be who I want to be."

What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn't change what I decide to do. I don't choose projects so people don't see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system.

I try to define myself through my own choices rather than just accepting society's kind of you're that, you're that, let me put you in a box kind of thing.

People will always put you in a box that they think you fit in, and it's up to you to not fall into it.

That's definitely something I've experienced my whole life - people thinking one thing and then discovering that I'm not, hopefully. So I relate to having to fight that and claim my own identity, when people are trying to throw different ones at me.

You call yourself what you want to call yourself.

Don't classify me, read me.

I just don't want to give anybody a reason to label me as something I'm not.

If you can't pigeon-hole yourself, who can you pigeon-hole?

People tell me what to do every single day. They think I'm boring. I'm Disney kid. So, there's that.

I’m not trying to be, like, the bisexual, lesbian rapper. I don’t live on other people’s terms.

Depending on their fondest memory of you, most people hold on so tightly to their fondest memory they don’t usually let you be anything greater than that. And that’s one of the things I think I allowed myself to be a victim of earlier in my career. What I learned as I got older is I decide. I decide what it’s like for me, not other people. You can be whatever you’d like to be. You just have to choose it.

We have a problem with any labels that people try to hang on us, because all it does is drag you down.

Never categorize yourself, society does that to you, don't do it to yourself.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

I have to fight to keep my image really me... I rejected some gorgeous publicity shots because they just didn't look like me.

I think any label is bad. I'm more than a label.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am 'known for' is what I am.

I've tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.

I am doing things that are true to me. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.

How dull it is to have people defining you.

Whatever labels are being pinned on me have nothing to do with me.