“First of all, I’ve been having a wonderful run of luck with cover albums, songs I didn’t write. I had five pop cover albums and two Christmas albums, and they were all very successful.”

I stay glued to my piano and my work. I don’t look up. I write, I produce, I do the next project, I do my job. I don’t look up, and I try to be kind. I try to be kind to people. That’s what I do.

You say something stupid and the next morning you’re in the headlines.

My goal was always to be involved in music that would outlive me. And maybe that’s actually happening.

You can’t possibly prepare for what happens to you the day you hit No. 1 and people treat you differently.

I think the people who are out there for fame get themselves in a lot of trouble.

There’s just no quiet in Vegas.

I was always into the music. Music, in general, saved my life. But the fame part… I would look up, see what was going on around me, the reporters and photographers and all, and then I would just go back to making my music.

QVC has been very good to me.

Misfits aren’t misfits among other misfits.

I couldn’t bear the road anymore. I’m sure that a lot of people who have been on the road a long time will say the same thing. After a while, waiting for bedroom service and planes – I wanted to go home.

I am a musician. My passion for music has obliterated everything in its path for my entire life.

Everybody has to find out: who are you? What do you believe in?

No one person or material thing could ever come close to the feeling I get when the music is right.

Touring is a young man’s game, but after 30 years of it, I want to stay home.

I feel that after all those horrible reviews and jokes, I wasn’t crazy all these years to stand up for the music I believe in. This album has proven that somewhere in the human race, the human heart is still racing and breaking and I am so grateful.

I keep reading about people who want to be famous – it’s not that they want to be great songwriters or great actors, they want to be celebrities. That is scary because you can be famous doing some really stupid things.

No matter what you do, you’ll never run away from you.

I’m not leaving the fight just because I decided not to run. I’m going to expand my political action committee and volunteer for it. I’m going to do lots of other things where I will have a voice. So I’m not leaving the fight.

There’s no magic to running far or climbing Everest. Endurance is mental strength. It’s all about heart.

I’m from Kansas, so there were a lot of vacant lots and open fields to tackle each other in so we could avoid tackling each other on the street. But running on the street and trying not to get taken down on the concrete, that will make you fast, that’s for sure.

Grief is like the wind. When it’s blowing hard, you adjust your sails and run before it. If it blows too hard, you stay in the harbor, close the hatches and don’t take calls.

People compare me to Isiah Thomas because of my quickness and change-of-direction, the way I change speeds and run the team.

Most of us have very clear memories of the self-critical internal conversation running on in our heads while we were playing poorly, and yet it often seems that we hardly remember noticing it at all while we were playing well.

Anyone can run 20 miles. It’s the next six that count.