“I ain’t got no reverse. I’ve learned, a little later in life, it works out pretty good to have one every once in a while.”

You know, in the days when I started, if you had Chet Atkins’ name on your record as a producer and it was on RCA, you could work the road. It didn’t have to be a big hit record, it just had to have that on it.

Was an American archetype, the bad guy with the big heart.

There’s always one more way to do things and that’s your way, and you have a right to try it at least once.

And yet his greatest desire was the simple warmth of love’s fire, cause it’s cold on the dark side of fame.

What I did. I’ve listened to it, and I think it was more a west coast rock thing, you know? But it fit. It was country, but it was my own interpretation of country.

I say, Lord, do right be me, I’m tired of being lonesome, on’ry, and mean.

I was king of the mountain for a long time, well, I don’t want that no more.

Lately I’ve heard rumors that the eagle may be lame. Just because I’ve been idle, don’t mean that I’m tame.

This is getting funny, but there ain’t nobody laughing.

He gave us all a mind to think with and to know what’s right or wrong, he is that inner spirit that keeps us strong.

I don’t think there’s anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened.

If you see me getting smaller, I’m leaving, don’t be grieving, just gotta get away from here. If you see me getting smaller, don’t worry, and no hurry, I’ve got the right to disappear.

Each tomorrow will depend on the love you give today.

I could have killed her when we first met and I’ve been out of jail by now.

Those neon light nights, couldn’t stay out of fights, keeps a-haunting me in memories.

Now this is over thirty years later and the guy said he was that cab driver. He apologized and he was serious. I felt awful. He might have been spending his whole life thinking he had jinxed me, but I told him he hadn’t. My number was up.

Fashion is defined by what later becomes out of fashion.

Often I find that poems predict what I’m going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have.

You come first, the clothes later. Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Be creative.

But this night our feet must tread in thorny paths, or later, and for ever, the feet you love must walk in paths of flame!

… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.

There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.

Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.