“If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world.”

They’re just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It’s that way everywhere.

Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?

To me, songwriting is the backbone of Nashville.

Half of them I’d hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn’t even know it.

The music business doesn’t take up that much of my time.

Everybody was going on about it, so mom started hounding me more.

I have my little antique car collection, and when the weather is pretty I like to get out one of my old cars.

I’m usually just enjoying life.

Love is stolen in the shadows of the night. Though it’s wrong all along, it keeps going on as long as they keep it out of sight.

I have a little route I run down in the country, down Nachez Trace Parkway.

Pour me something tall and strong, make it a Hurricane before I go insane.

When I was in high school, I don’t know that I really had big dreams.

If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you’d say, “Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter,” but I try not to write them that they are so specific that they wouldn’t apply to anybody that has a child.

I always try to make the music that I like and think my fans will like.

I don’t write all my stuff.

I could have done a hundred songs, really.

I think it’s really easy to forget that – I’d sooner play something musical than flash, and as I can’t play anything flash.

I try to be musical. Drums can set a mood, create an impression, as much as anything else.

If anything I consider myself an anarchist.

I discovered is that I have a couple of valves that were leaky and had been giving, gave me a problem then. But I hadn’t noticed anything up until then.

I don’t know how many of you have been to New York, but if a building is two blocks away from anything, you can’t see it.

That was the easiest part of all. I couldn’t wait to get to the ballpark I’d be the first one there and I was willing to do anything. I think that’s why the veterans liked me.

I don’t have anything against organized religions, except when they engender hatred for other religions.

I couldn’t think of anything less appealing than molding the minds of tomorrow’s leaders.