Besides good schools, a good airport, and the Cowboys, Dallas had golf courses, and golf was fast becoming an obsession with me.

For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with.

The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.

It used to be that if you had a pretty good record, you could stop by a station in Little Rock or Atlanta and let the DJ listen to it. No way something like that can happen now.

The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use.

I finally came to terms with manic depression and lithium. I've taken lithium regularly for the past few years and have had no further bouts with manic depression.

Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously.

A fan will grab you and hug you and will not let go. When that happens, you wish it could be that way all over the world.

There only have been two people on this earth that I was nervous around: Chet Atkins and Mickey Mantle. It's because of the respect I have for them.

No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had.

I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well.

I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost . . . but still, I was alive.

Where there is forgiveness, there is always love.

It was a vicious cycle, though. The more gratification we found in our own geniuses, the more isolated we grew.

We are all men, feeble, frail, and apt to faint.

May my legend prosper and thrive. I wish it a long and happy life.

There's the generic 'be yourself', you'll learn it the hard way. You might just have to learn it that hard way... I think I probably kind of learned it the hard way.

As soon as you can say what you think and not what some other person has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man.

Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.

But he keeps his heart free of any feelings of hatred.

Faith is not a commodity we either have or don't have-it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.