“Country music to me is heartfelt music that speaks to the common man. It is about real life stories with rather simple melodies that the average person can follow.”

I can’t be all that wrong. I do love traditional country music. I love the good stuff.

It goes beyond the money. It goes beyond all of that and the glory.

Different people have their ways of measuring success, maybe it’s not the right way but wrong’s what I do best.

Some of them don’t have that. They get a couple of releases. If you don’t sell two million copies, you’re gone, you’re out of here.

Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad.

Don’t let the ‘business’ change what it is you love because the people, the fans, respond to what is heartfelt. They can always tell when a singer is faking it.

If you’re gonna drive me crazy baby, drive me to drink.

It didn’t make much difference what time of night it was, whenever [my father would] come in drunk, he’d say, “Get up and sing me some songs.”

I love what I’ve done and I just can’t stand to see what they’re doing to it. But I’ve learned to live with it because that’s what they’ve done. They’ve come in with the modern sounds. I call it modern pop. It’s not country anymore.

We didn’t want to sing but we sang.

After the first couple of years recording I did a lot of praying. I said, ‘Lord, please give me a hit.’ I want one so bad.

The only thing different between sinners and saints is one is forgiven and the other ain’t.

Today they forget you in five years. They give an artist nowadays four or five years and that’s it.

If people liked your singing well enough, if you were special to them, then you never left their minds throughout all of the years.

I just thank God I’m still here and the main thing is to try to get closer and closer to Him as much as I can so that I can treat my friends and my family the way they should be treated.

He stopped loving her today, they placed a wreath upon his door.

We need to make some real fundamental change from the Constitution down in this country.

You grow up real quick, a half-Mexican in a sailor’s suit, because I’d be riding the streetcar to school everyday.

I did say to her that I thought that she had a real gift, and it’s a good idea to know that. It’s always good to go with your gift.

There is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away.

I like, for instance, ‘Serpico.’ I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could – I could embody him. I could, you know.

Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It’s a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It’s sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.

I’ve been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That’s the stuff my dreams are made of.

They cost nothing, and they can be as real as you like to make them. You own your dreams and they are priceless.