You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.

He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.

If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.

I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.