“You go to LA, or you go to New York, and it’s really fun to go there. But they’re not grounded. Everybody is just competing all the time for the limelight. It’s too much entertainment industry. There are too many choices. And it’s distracting to me.”

Beautiful loser, where you gonna fall? When you realize, you just can’t have it all.

You’re not going to hear me do a rap song, you’re not going to hear me do a jazz song. We have to be true to our roots, do what we do, and try to do it a little better each time.

I really like the thing I did with Martina McBride. I had that song sitting around for a long time.

When you’re in a relationship, you’re always surrounded by a ring of circumstances… joined together by a wedding ring, or in a boxing ring.

I’ve never been unhappy with Capitol. Not really. They’ve been really good by me.

They do respect her but, they love to watch her strut.

The years rolled slowly past and I found myself alone. Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends, I found myself further and further from my home.

Every now and then you’ll nail one that’s really, really special. And that’s what you live for.

With only one thing in common, they got the fire down below.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I’m playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

He wants his home and security, he wants to live like a sailor at sea.

One victim lives in tragedy, another victim stops to stare, and still another walks on by pretending not to see

And you pretend it doesn’t bother you, When you just want to explode.

The two hours onstage is great. But I can only play a show and then take a night off. I have to sing for two hours, and then I’ve gotta rest it for a night. So it’s the other 46 hours that are just boring as heck.

Sometimes you can hear them talk, other times you can’t. All the same old cliches, is that a woman or a man?

I’m older now but still running against the wind

Every time you have to make a choice about anything, think Does this go toward or away from what I want? Always choose what goes toward what you want.

The number of choices you make in the event that you see on stage, those choices are sometimes largely determined by the rehearsal process and the experiments that you go through and the choices that you make in the rehearsal room, not in front of an audience.

Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.

Anything you can do needs to be done, so pick up the tool of your choice and get started.

Once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices…. Needless to say, this is far less satisfying that nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.

My choice is what I choose to be.

It’s not an easy choice, but that’s OK. Easy doesn’t equal good. Difficulty doesn’t equal bad. It’s just life, is all.

Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.