Ray Cummins is my good friend and one of the best finger pickers around.

When I was a little boy, I told my dad, 'When I grow up, I want to be a musician.' My dad said: 'You can't do both, Son'.

A long apprenticeship is the most logical way to success. The only alternative is overnight stardom, but I can't give you a formula for that.

Years from now, after I'm gone, someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me.

Everything I've ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

Copying one person is stealing. Copying ten is research.

It takes a lot of devotion and work, or maybe I should say play, because if you love it, that's what it amounts to I haven't found any shortcuts, and I've been looking for a long time.

Once you become predictable, no one's interested anymore.

You shape your own destiny.

If you hear something you like, and you're halfway like the public, chances are they'll like it too.

It took me 20 years to learn I couldn't tune too well. And by that time I was too rich to care.

People keep asking "Jacob or Edward?" when the really important question is "Diamond Dave or Sammy?

Are you going to give her gonorrhea too, or was that gift just for me?

A strong desire derives a person straight through the hardest rock.

Aging is a chance to make what was good, great, and what was never so good, better...

We need an energy revolution by breaking our dependence on fossil fuels, polluting fuels... I am very, very confident our small state will lead this. We will be noticed by the country and the world.

Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience.

Have I done aught of value to my fellow-men? Then have I done much for myself.

A thousand things might have stopped me from being here right now, but instead, a thousand things brought me here.

In a world of such beauty as birds in flight, surely I can come to feel at home again, even after my loss.

When the storm brews and the waves swell, only an experienced captain can control the ship and save it.