My mother always told me that any talent is a gift of God and I always believed it. If I quit, I would just live in front of the television and get fat and die pretty soon.

I would take songs that I'd loved as a child and redo them in my mind for the new voice I had, the low voice.

By the time I actually recorded Bitter Tears I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of those songs... I expected there to be trouble with that album, and there was.... when it was released, many radio stations wouldn't play it.... The very idea of unconventional or even original ideas ending up on "country" radio in the late 1990s is absurd.

I'm not really concerned about boundaries. I just follow my conscience and my heart. Follow your heart. That's what I do. Compassion is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of compassion.

I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere.

Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.

I haven't been familiar with hard work. It was no problem for me. But first I hitchhiked to Pontiac, Mich. and got a job working in Fisher Body making those 1951 Pontiacs.