“If you have the courage and you have the heart, that hero just might be you.”

Country music isn’t a guitar, it isn’t a banjo, it isn’t a melody, it isn’t a lyric. It’s a feeling.

When I look at you girl, I see a true work of art. So many beautiful things coming in one little heart.

When you’re down in Texas, Bob Wills is still the king.

The men who could not fight, in a war that didn’t seem right. You let them come home, America.

Is your head up your ass so far that you can’t pull it out?

The rock and roll spirit. I learned a lot of that because I worked with Buddy Holly. I played bass with him, and he taught me a lot about that.

I love Johnny Cash, and I respect Johnny Cash. He’s the biggest. He’s like an Elvis in this business, but no, he’s never been the rebel.

Mainly what I learned from Buddy… was an attitude. He loved music, and he taught me that it shouldn’t have any barriers to it.

I’ve always felt that blues, rock ‘n’ roll and country are just about a beat apart.

Cuz I was never pretty anyway and never cared anything about that.

It was all devastating. I’d never dealt with losing anyone close to me, and I didn’t know where to put it in my life.

His looking at it from over there and it not being a part of his history made it so he could be objective.

Heroes put to the test, keeping a promise, doing their best.

The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

So I’m not very popular here with those inside the system, as you might guess. I never wanted to be.

The villains have turned into heroes. The heroes have turned into heals.

The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the ‘National Geographic’ covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.

If we’d had Drew Brees, I might still be in Miami.

To be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

The bottom line is what we do might not be the safest so there is always some risk but we are ready to take that into account because we love racing and we love motor sports and it is dangerous.

What’s been great about the human race gives you a sense of how great you might get, how far you can reach.

A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel.

It’s pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.