At home, I'm lucky if I can write three or four hours before the phone starts ringing and the kids want to go to soccer.

San Antonio is like a military town. It's like literally - when I was growing up there, there were five Air Force bases, plus Fort Sam Houston. I was always sort of near the military.

I'm not a Democrat; I'm something well to the left of a Democrat, but I'm just realistic about the system.

What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.

I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.

I can deal with conservatives in a democracy. With real conservatives, I don't agree with them, but I understand why they believe what they believe and I believe they're being honest with me about it.