“Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time.”

A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat.

There’s no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.

The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I’ve got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.

It’s good to believe in yourself, but there are people out there who can make or break you.

It takes a real man to live for God-a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.

My arms are too short to box with God.

Until things are brighter. I’m the man in black.

Love is a burning thing and it makes a firey ring.

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I’m the biggest sinner of them all.

I came to believe in a power much higher than I.

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine I keep my eyes wide open all the time I keep the ends out for the tie that binds Because you’re mine, I walk the line.

You can ask the people around me. I don’t give up. I don’t give up. I don’t give – and it’s not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don’t give up. I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I don’t believe in it.

The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don’t go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.

A person knows when it just seems to feel right to them. Listen to your heart.

When I think about country music, I think about America.

Public schools in the late ’80s and early ’90s were a total mess… we felt that if I was going to have a good educational option in my life, I would have to go to a public school district that actually served its children.

I hope you are reading to your children, out loud. That’s much better than watching television, much better. They won’t get very much out of television except some bad thoughts.

Having a kid is great as long as his eyes are closed and he’s not moving or speaking.

We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill your children.

You can huff and puff. But blow me down? I doubt it kid, or you get your ass whupped.

I challenge every one of you who can hear me to rise to the divinity within you. Do we really realize what it means to be a child of God, to have within us something of the divine nature?

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

I don’t remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.