My way of communicating with God as a boy (and often even now) was through the lyrics of a song. . . . So I didn't have the problem some people do who say, "I don't know how to pray." I used the songs to communicate with God. . . . To me, songs were the telephone to heaven, and I tied up the line quite a bit.

As sure as God made black and white, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light.

Being rich means you get to worry about everything except money.

You miss a lot of opportunities by making mistakes, but that's part of it: knowing that you're not shut out forever, and that there's a goal you still can reach.

All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate…I choose love.

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.