Control success before it controls you.

I was raised in the Church of Christ, which was a very abstinent faith. And I just didn't [drink] - there was never anything that I found seductive enough, I guess, to have a romance with it.

Those songs [from church], I think, shaped to some degree how I would evolve as a writer, pentameter of songs, the melodies of those kind of hillbilly hymns - I used to refer to them - because they were not Southern gospel as much as they were passed down from Scottish Welsh Protestant hymnals.

My guitars, Cadillacs, and hillbilly music Is the only thing that keeps me hanging on.

I hope that books don't go the way of albums and CD, large format albums, and physical product.

I am probably the last of a generation able to gain an education in country music by osmosis, by sitting in a '64 Ford banging the buttons on the radio.

My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.