If you're gonna sing, sing loud.

People look at you, and they've got just the perfect little box for you, the perfect category. Call you a redneck. Call you a hillbilly. Like those were insults.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

It's a great day to be alive. I know the sun's still shining when I close my eyes.

It's the same old story you've heard a thousand times. Somebody's trust gets broken. Somebody's left behind.

The biggest cause of divorce is marriage.

Please tell me you will remember, no matter how much I do wrong that I had the best of intentions all along.

I've been writing on my own. It's like Roger Miller used to say, every now and then, like a dog having puppies, you have to crawl under the house and do it yourself.

When they talk about music getting in your blood, I understand exactly what they're talking about, because that is me.

I'm a member of a country club, country music is what I love.

I simply find that as a songwriter, my goal is to try to move people. And I feel that before I can move other people, I have to genuinely be able to move myself.

A realist is a slave to reality.

Writing is lonely. Until that moment you write your first character and suddenly you have company.

I know about women. I know that they're not men.

I am a big soccer fan, and a very big Liverpool fan.

There were a number of definitions of courage, but now I was seeing it in its simplest form: you do what has to be done day after day, and you never quit.

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

Lying about things large and small has become so accepted by so many that they even lie about lying.

Everybody underestimated the universality of the concept of a nightmare or a bad dream.

When we first went there we completely lacked confidence. Our manager told us our act was too long, and told us to drop certain numbers and concentrate on the exciting stuff. And he was right.

So, my big brother was playing guitar and I figured I'd try it too.