I guess the first time I played around Washington, D.C. was at a place called The Famous. That was the first place I played, I believe.

I'm thankful that I have lived long enough to become a legend, and I hope I deserve it.

I would have quit before I went rock-n-roll. I know one way, and that's natural, and when I can't make it, I'll come home and stay. I believe in my music.

The soundtrack of O Brother is the most publicity I've gotten. I don't feel that I have lost any of my old fans, but I have gained new ones.

You give out the words and then sing them. You give out the words, you know, and the people can hear what you're giving out, and they sing that song or that line and they do the same thing again.

I like for it to be mountain music or old-time country music or traditional bluegrass. Either one will fit me. It's traditional, basically.

I believe in my music.

I've done it all. I'm thankful and proud of what I've accomplished in my life. I hope to keep doing it.

I live about six miles from where I was born and raised.

No pleasure here on earth I find For in this world I'm bound to ramble.

I don't see any harm in brining an instrument into the church itself.

Religion is the opium of the poor

Be intelligent, but know it is better to be kind than smart.

And honestly, given the choice of facing my mother or a vampire, I think I'd always choose the latter.

I'm forty-two, " he said. "That's eighty-four in musician years.

When I first came to this country I didn't have a nickel in my pocket - now I have a nickel in my pocket.

I try to exist in a world where there is freedom of opinion, where you're allowed to make jokes. I don't want to live in some PC world where no-one's allowed to say anything.

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice

What a price we pay for experience, when we must sell our youth to buy it.

Historically, we have lived in a nation of energy dependence. Dependence on others for our heating and electricity, and for our fuel for transportation.

I grew up in France, my first language was French, and I tend to gravitate towards French cooking.