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

I think every album you have, especially if it’s done well, you feel like you’re competing with yourself.

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.

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 was – my big thing was I went to put super unleaded in my truck for the first time.

My opening acts are always really strong because I need a guy who can take on a big, big crowd. Which is not that easy to do.

The first thing I remember is that my dad had a big iron Olivetti typewriter and he worked all night.

My cousin’s gay, he went to London only to find out that Big Ben was a clock.

If you look at the common denominator of all the comics who have had big success, it’s being true to their nature… that’s what takes a long time to learn.

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

Welcome those big, sticky, complicated problems. In them are your most powerful opportunities.

Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.