I don't like politics, hypocrites, folks with poodles.

Hee Haw was probably my biggest exposure to live music at a young age, because there wasn't any live music around my town and no one in my family played instruments.

A country song is a song about life.

Faith, hope, and love are some good things He gave us; but the greatest is love

The older you are, I think you realize what you enjoy and what you don't need, what wears you out and what's important.

To me, songwriting is the backbone of Nashville. Looks can go, fads can go, but a good song lasts forever.

Tonight I'm the designated drinker.

I'm usually just enjoying life.

I'm hooked on my baby's love, there ain't nothing in the jug this strong.

Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke risin' against that blue sky? Did you shout out in anger, in fear of your neighbor or did you just sit down and cry?..

Love is stolen in the shadows of the night. Though it's wrong all along, it keeps going on as long as they keep it out of sight.

Without encouragement, what is the value of any meaningful relationship

We're truly alive when facing the prospect of our own mortality, if you convince yourself that you'll live forever, you'll never really have lived at all.

The experience of being depressed and emerging from depression made me understand the idea of a soul. I felt that the language in which one could best acknowledge that drew from faith.

Some of the most exalted states of consciousness I experienced were in bed with someone, alone, or with my spiritual teacher. There was never a difference for me.

I am pushed by my critics. I don't want to say I want to prove them wrong, but it pushes me on the field to play with a chip on my shoulder, and I play best when I have a chip on my shoulder.

Plan your hours to be productive...Plan your weeks to be educational...Plan your years to be purposeful. Plan your life to be an experience of growth. Plan to change. Plan to grow.

To be honest, I want readers to be wrung out. As a novelist, I don't have a political agenda or specific philosophy; I'm trying to create a gut-wrenching, intimate, memorable experience.

I am young and beautiful... at every age.

The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.

The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of God.