I could have done a hundred songs, really. It was hard to narrow them down, because I tried to pick songs for the most part that actually did have some effect on me or influenced me in the past.

I didn't realize until I was older what a huge music fan my daddy really was, and actually that my grandma played banjo at one time, and I didn't even know that until a year or two ago.

For some reason I've been labeled that and it's fine, but there are a lot of other artists that sing real traditional stuff, so I don't know why they picked me. That's what I've always done.

My mother kept asking me, 'When are you going to do a gospel album?' And I've always wanted to do a gospel album. Everybody was going on about it, so mom started hounding me more.

Hee Haw was probably my biggest exposure to live music at a young age, because there wasn't any live music around my town and no one in my family played instruments.

I could have done a hundred songs, really. It was hard to narrow them down, because I tried to pick songs for the most part that actually did have some effect on me or influenced me in the past.

Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it.

I really was a fan of his and always have been - his writing especially, you know? I think people a lot of times overlook that part, because he kind of got into that party character so heavy.

He's written some great songs. I thought that "Blues Man" was a perfect song for me to do as a tribute.

A country song is a song about life.

Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.

He's written some great songs. I thought that 'Blues Man' was a perfect song for me to do as a tribute.

I grew up with nothing, so whenever I got to where I could have something I felt like I needed to have everything I couldn't have when I was young.

I like to write sad songs. They're much easier to write and you get a lot more emotion into them. But people don't want to hear them as much. And radio definitely doesn't; they want that positive, uptempo thing.

I mean, I am driven and laid-back at the same time.

I mean, my voice has gotten a little deeper sounding as I've gotten older, I think. I noticed that.

I think every album you have, especially if it's done well, you feel like you're competing with yourself.

I think if you retire from touring then people think you are retired.

I'm usually just enjoying life.

I've always wanted to make a bluegrass album.

If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. For every one bad one, there's a thousand good ones.

If you can last until you're 40 years old, hopefully you'll be mature enough to figure out the rest of the years.

Making music is still what keeps a fire going on in me.

Oklahoma's always been good to me.

The music business doesn't take up that much of my time. I probably should put a little more energy into it.

The older you are, I think you realize what you enjoy and what you don't need, what wears you out and what's important.

What I enjoy doing more than anything is, I have my little antique car collection, and when the weather is pretty I like to get out one of my old cars. I have a little route I run down in the country, down Nachez Trace Parkway. The loop down through there is just really relaxing, not much traffic.

You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio.

You just write about things that happen.

To me, songwriting is the backbone of Nashville. Looks can go, fads can go, but a good song lasts forever.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Bambi has a profound effect on children because it's about losing your mother.

To believe in a just law of cause and effect, carrying with it a punishment or a reward, is to believe in righteousness.

Our estimates suggest that a tax increase of 1 percent of GDP reduces output over the next three years by nearly 3 percent. The effect is highly significant.

The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them.

I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation.

Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect.

Well, in pharmacology, if the effect is local, it's of course absolutely awkward to use it in any other way than as a local treatment.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

The good news was that Enterprise and the newly arrived Yorktown had attacked the Marshall and Gilbert islands. Those attacks had a great effect on morale.

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.

The Tax Code today is more complicated than ever, and the very people on the Republican side who denounce the Tax Code's complexity are the ones that put together what they now call a convoluted monstrosity. They put it into effect.

If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen.

It would be great to take one city street and turn it into a pedestrian corridor and see what kind of effect it has on the businesses in that area - It's the future I think.

To enlarge or illustrate this power and effect of love is to set a candle in the sun.

The cause is hidden; the effect is visible to all.

Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.

The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You can kill us, but you'll have to kill a lot of us; you may have to kill all of us. And, thank heaven, we are not yet ready to do that.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.