But most distinctly, I remember always saying to myself that when I get big, I'm not going to go to bed hungry, I'm not going to wear hand-me-down clothes.

I am who I am, I am what I am, I do what I do and I ain't never gonna do it any different. I don't care who likes it and who don't.

I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way - I said, 'I think it's time for me to have some fun.'

I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.

I remember as a kid being cold a lot, and hungry sometimes. Wed go to bed with just cornbread and milk, and I remember wearing shoes with holes in the bottom. I remember having twine for shoestrings.

I've got the hungries for your love and I'm waiting in your welfare line.

If you want me in the Hall of Fame put me in because of some contributions that I have made to country music.

I'd like to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs and had a hell of a time.

The biggest fool to hit the big time and all I've got to do is act naturally.

I'm in an absolute frenzy towards doing as many things as I can that I want to do today. The rest can wait till tomorrow, next week, if I'm around we'll take a look.

My mother told me on several different occasions that she was livin' her dream vicariously through me. She once said that I was getting to do all the things that she would have wanted to have done.

Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.

I simply wish to continue to learn, & try to do what I have to do, better.

The war is ending, for the first time in the history of relations between Moscow and Grozny, and the era of peace is starting.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.

Everything in the air that is beneath me, especially if it is a one seater . . . is lost, for it cannot shoot to the rear.

I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it.

Just because someone thinks he is being attacked by the media doesn't mean he is. Many times the media actually is being fair, and they're attacking for good reason.

The world cannot afford to lose the talents of half it's people if we are to solve the many problems that beset us.

The Arab states don't seem to do a good job of providing for their own people, so I am not sure why they would suddenly develop an ability to help the Palestinians.