For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot of thinking. Besides Sun Studio, which helped put rock n' roll on the map all over the world, the legendary Stax Studio also called Memphis home.

Sometimes you can get so far in yourself that you don't know who you are.

The opportunity to write for the 'L.A. Weekly' has been one of the better breaks that has come my way in a long time.

What I'm saying is America has a job deficit because hundreds of thousands of jobs went elsewhere. Not because [Barack] Obama raised your taxes. He, in fact, lowered them. They are lower.

Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.

If you have an idea of what you want to do in your future, you must go at it with almost monastic obsession. [...] You have to go at it single-mindedly and let nothing get in your way.

I was happy to find out that when on tour, Dolly Parton doesn't use hotels but stays on her bus every night, to the point of having her buses shipped from Austria to Australia so she can tour the way she sees fit. I used one of her buses once - an honor.