“You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.”

A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat.

There’s no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.

The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I’ve got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.

It’s good to believe in yourself, but there are people out there who can make or break you.

It takes a real man to live for God-a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.

My arms are too short to box with God.

Until things are brighter. I’m the man in black.

Love is a burning thing and it makes a firey ring.

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I’m the biggest sinner of them all.

I came to believe in a power much higher than I.

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine I keep my eyes wide open all the time I keep the ends out for the tie that binds Because you’re mine, I walk the line.

You can ask the people around me. I don’t give up. I don’t give up. I don’t give – and it’s not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don’t give up. I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I don’t believe in it.

The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don’t go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.

A person knows when it just seems to feel right to them. Listen to your heart.

When I think about country music, I think about America.

It is the limited identities of race, religion, and nationality that breed conflict and violence.

If You Can Keep Your Identities Aside, Your Mind Will Become Still.

We are so much more than the sum of parts colors staining us bruises of identity.

The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about.

Cultural identity; warped and changed. Each of you thinks the other is to blame, It’s created this way, yet we all play a role. We could stop it today if we felt the truth in our souls.

The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.

Being home with two babies has been challenging and fun, while trying to carve out an identity for myself beyond it.

We’re all moving into a new digital world where we are going to have little clone versions of ourselves to represent our identity.