Sadly, I wish I had been able to play ["Miner's Prayer"] for [grandfather]. Yeah, I'll never escape the influence of him in my life. And my - his wife, my grandmother, Earlene Tibbs - those experiences with them shaped me musically probably more profoundly than anything else in my life and shaped me as a writer.

The future has a lot to do with the past.

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, time don't matter to me. I'm a thousand miles from nowhere and there's not place that I want to be.

I was very fortunate in having David Fincher, the director come to me. Now I've seen the finished product, I feel that every bit of the nine months we spent on the film was worth it.

I'll never quit playing country music, or at least acknowledging it, always, as the cornerstone of what I am.

[My grandfather] was very, very fortunate that he was never trapped in a mining cave-in. But he lost his brother in a mining disaster on a shift that he wasn't working. And he was in a collapse where his brother-in-law was killed very near him in the same section.

When the whistle blows each morning and I walk down in that cold, dark mine, say a prayer to my dear savior. Please let me see the sunshine one more time. When oh when will it be over? When will I lay these burdens down? And when I die, dear lord in heaven, please take my soul from 'neath that cold, dark ground.