I was made to go to church and I heard the gospel songs, and every now then somebody would come through with a guitar and that was a thrill!

I saw all that [white trash] growing up in Alabama and Georgia. I had a group of country cousins and we'd go visit them when I was a kid. They lived on a red dirt Georgia back road, in a shack, with twelve kids. Farmers. No electricity, they had a well on their back porch, but they had nothing, yet they were the happiest, freest people I'd ever met. I loved to visit them. Great sense of humor, and they kept up with all the latest music, country, rockabilly, that stuff. Great food they grew in the fields and canned. Happy people.

I was such a heavy drinker I was going to die at age 37. Not to mention the drugs. I'm glad to be sober, I haven't missed a thing. A lot of people never get the chance to come back.

I may yet move [from Nashville], and where would I move if not Texas or New Mexico? I couldn't afford a home in California. I need to travel out of there occasionally.

The wins and losses are over for Rice, the football player, who leaves with 38 NFL records. He was the easiest guy in the world to throw the football to, ... You always knew where he was headed.

If I was an actor, it would be like a part that was me. It has to be real to me. I have to make it mine. I really enjoy taking a song I feel that way about, and sometimes it can take a long time to come up with just the right touch. I think that's really my greatest talent, interpreting.

If I wasn't so lazy, or if I had a roadie, I'd have a line of guitars on stage. I'd have a lap steel and a nylon string up there, but who wants to keep up with all that?