If you get a song right for its usage at the time, it can be useful to others. ...Those songs are more friendly to other artists looking for material.

If you're dedicated, if it's something that lives and breathes in your heart, then you've simply got to go ahead and do it.

Pain comes like the weather, but joy is a choice.

He speaks four letter language because his mind is small. His voice is like venom, I don't like him at all.

In life's rich beauty pageant we put children on a stage, said flash your soft white belly child, but just don't act your age.

Don't compromise your heart for something crass.

I figure as an artist the best thing you can do is follow your heart - and if your heart is marketable, then you win.

The poetry of country music will survive.

You learn how to do good work by being honest with yourself.

[My parents] worked hard all week long, and the way they celebrated and rejoiced in life was by making music on weekends. And that music was Country Music.

God gave me wisdom, but the devil's got style.

Peace—[the ability] to sleep in the storm!

The philosopher is not the spokesman of his age, but an angel imprisoned in time.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.

In the horrifying calculus of self-deception, the greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify it to maintain our feelings of decency and self-worth.

Anybody can jump a motorcycle. The trouble begins when you try to land it

If a guy is a good athlete, he'll end up being a pretty decent golfer if he just takes it up. But you never master it; even the best players in the world never master the game.

Actors don't necessarily want to be famous or rich or anything else. It's a very bad gamble if that's what you're after.

I take class. I'm always ballet ready. I'm ready to go - got my tights and my shoes.

A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.