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.

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.

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.

Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business.

A man who refuses light will remain in the darkness even by the side of light!

I’m almost afraid to tell you. Let’s put it this way: clean toilets are the least of your problems in this country.

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.

Why is it that you still beguile me –As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes? Why is that you smile on me – With sudden summer lightning strikes?

I don't think my lyrics go so well when I try to sound poetic. Some people do that really well. If I did that I'd feel like it wouldn't be genuine.

I'm a bad woman, but I'm damn good company.

The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.

You are here. You are not the one who will go and come. Let what you're suffering from go and come, not you. You stay put.

Know your enemy - and learn about his favorite sport.

Hatred toward any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God.