My mother played a little bit of the old time clawhammer. She tuned the banjo up and picked one tune for me, and it just become natural to me. When she picked it, I just started and picked it, too.

I'm thankful that I have lived long enough to become a legend, and I hope I deserve it.

I would have quit before I went rock-n-roll. I know one way, and that's natural, and when I can't make it, I'll come home and stay. I believe in my music.

The soundtrack of O Brother is the most publicity I've gotten. I don't feel that I have lost any of my old fans, but I have gained new ones.

You give out the words and then sing them. You give out the words, you know, and the people can hear what you're giving out, and they sing that song or that line and they do the same thing again.

I like for it to be mountain music or old-time country music or traditional bluegrass. Either one will fit me. It's traditional, basically.

I believe in my music.

I've done it all. I'm thankful and proud of what I've accomplished in my life. I hope to keep doing it.

I live about six miles from where I was born and raised.

No pleasure here on earth I find For in this world I'm bound to ramble.

I don't see any harm in brining an instrument into the church itself.

How, and when shall these things come to pass? wherefore are our years few and evil?

Money looks better in the bank than on your feet.

absencelooks like a lake bed flooded with skysounds like cotton howlingtastes like tear-stained pillowssmells like churning bile and burnt hairfeels like screaming agony, my heart dying and dying

The silence, she thought, was remarkable: a perfect, shimmering thing, and fragile. Like glass, if it shattered, it would never come back together again.

This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God.

Say goodbye to golden yesterdays: or your heart will never learn to love the present.

The supporters...It is true that they are dangerous when they run close to the riders. From there to throwing a punch. That is a step.

A small step in a good direction.

I live a generally quiet life, as it were.

You have to set the tone and the pace, define objectives and strategies, and demonstrate through personal example what you expect from others.