The history of music is nothing more than the history of art-music or classical music, the music that was commissioned by aristocrats.

I was kind of pathetic. That's what got me playing out in the street. I ran out of money and needed more gin for the night.

I don't care too much for thinking about the past. The truth is just another story. You can remember it any way you want; it's never gonna be the same twice.

I've been playing one way or another since I was about three years old. I don't remember not knowing how to play any instruments.

I don't think music is an art any more than cooking food is an art.

Some guy is good at putting these verses together, and some guy is good at singing them. That's just the way it is.

I'm just a guy that sings songs because that's what he likes to do, I guess.

I wouldn't consider myself a songwriter at all. Maybe I piece together a certain little thing here and there, but songwriters are people who do this with sheet music.

I don't associate much with anybody. I'm not big on all the teachings and groups and being a part of something, I guess.

I was born or raised in the church, so I guess the first songs I would have played would have been church songs.

I just started playing music on the street and walking around with a fiddle, and I think that's kind of when I started being serious - or as serious as it's going to get.

Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss one off.

Because I think people must be the same everywhere. Only these people are in my bones.

Dream high and exceed your expectations.

We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity the intolerable labour of thought.

Exponential growth in access to the Internet, satellite television and radio, cell phones, and P.D.A.'s means that breaking news now reaches virtually every corner of the globe.

We are fully aware that, in a world at war, each set of belligerents is over ready to regard those who are not with them as against them; but the course we have followed is a just course.

I only know when I don't know a thing. My uncle has taught me that wisdom lies in that.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.