Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.

I live out of cans a lot. But I try to indulge only in healthy canned food.

It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

In the dark morning silence, I placed a gun to her head. She wore red dresses, but now she lay dead.

Buddy , you might think that I've lost my mind. But mister, I'd pay twice to do it one more time.

But that is a valid, continuing service that that music - which is, in some cases, 80 or 90 years old - is rendering. And proving its own timelessness.

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, time don't matter to me. I'm a thousand miles from nowhere and there's not place that I want to be.

Control success before it controls you.

My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself.

how these words, wait to diein the arms of all the poetry..yet to be written.

The secret of success is this all-powerful creative energy within, which human beings often sleep over throughout their entire lives.

The hopeful man sees success where others see failure sunshine where others see shadows and storm.

I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.

It's nice to be financially secure. Apart from that, I really don't care too much about money.

The foolhardy are not necessarily stupid, for fools simply follow their imagination whereas the stupid have none.

Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

Sexual pessimism and hostility toward the pleasures of the flesh are a legacy from the ancient world which Christianity has preserved in a special measure to this day.

... And death unloads thee.