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

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.

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.

The last 16 years of my daddys life, he got to work for me, and that made him his own boss and he like that.

Come slowly over the hills and valleys to touch my soul, feel my heart, and vanish in my joy.

The amazing feeling of being alive beautifully conquers the fear of death

Whereas your blackness, ethnicity, homosexuality is something that might be genetic, I can't touch that, and I have no right.

Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was lightyears away from me.

Good intentions aren't enough. People have good intentions when they set a goal to do something, but then they miss a deadline or other milestone.

If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.

Someone's always saying, "It's not whether you win or lose," but if you feel that way, you're as good as dead.

I really hope that when I leave, my last trace will be beautiful.

Often much of my work is very optimistic, or solution-based. I have always believed that art is a tool for transformation, and something that should give people some kind of agency.

If you choose to criticize, you choose your enemies.