I'm trying to make records where people don't feel cheated. Nashville has been guilty of insulting the Country Music audience for years and years.

I'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.

Maybe I'm not as big a star as Bruce Springsteen because I'm not as good. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I still have an audience of a certain size. I think it's one of the things I'm luckiest.

Critics are notoriously liberal with their use of the term 'genius'.

Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.

We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.

I'm one of the few people that I know that sings better than they did 20 years ago.