You can keep rummaging around until you find a song you like, but you can't predict whether it'll hit or not.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

I snapped my fingers all through it. Sometimes I set my own tempo during rehearsal by doing that.

I tell you, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers!

Sixteen Tons was written eight years before I recorded it.

Know yourself -- and know your audience.

When you do a show five days a week and one night a week, the way I was doing, you use up so much music every day that pretty soon you find yourself hustling for material.

You can't cheat the public for long.

Do you want to be successful? Nurture your talent.

Shot Gun Boogie, I wanted wedding bells. I'll be back little gal, when your pappy runs out of shells.

If you see me coming, better step aside. A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died.

A sad fact in life is that you cannot have winners without losers, no matter what you do, it's up to you to make out which one you are.

Scotland consistently produces world-class writers.

Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens — but maybe if it’s how you see them, that’s how they really are.

Fire is the test of gold adversity of strong men.

I try to give positive energy in all my shows.

The calligraphic letter is not entirely a letter, but something that sits between writing and music

I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.

Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

I didn't get paid for performances most of my life. If I did, I would be billionaire now, and I'm not.

The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside.