It became a metaphor for the lives of the people in this film and for the Old West, for the abandonment that occurred in the early part of the 20th century.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

I think actors are at the mercy of the opportunities presented to them. So you kind of have to wait for them to choose you. My music is insular - I can choose that.

Fortunately any of the songs we've recorded can be extremely fulfilling to perform depending on the variety of circumstances that surround any given show.

'm really proud of it. To me, it's a movie about character behavior and the pecking order of the pack, as well as the central character's massive survival guilt.

But that is a valid, continuing service that that music - which is, in some cases, 80 or 90 years old - is rendering. And proving its own timelessness.

It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.

In addition, I'm finishing a track for the movie 'Waking Up In Reno', but there are numerous other singers I look forward to recording with in the near future.

Control success before it controls you.

A voice expressing emotion in a musical way moves on. It's like the finale of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - the world turns in on itself, as a universe unto itself, in the shape of one human being.

I tried to pay some small tribute to A Man and a Woman (1966) with the recurring musical theme.

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself. And so I make reference to and acknowledge things that I feel have been dismissed, trying to restate those musical and cultural elements clearly and vehemently.

It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music.

I was very fortunate in having David Fincher, the director come to me. Now I've seen the finished product, I feel that every bit of the nine months we spent on the film was worth it.

It became a metaphor for the lives of the people in this film and for the Old West, for the abandonment that occurred in the early part of the 20th century.

Only beginning to present itself over the horizon.

At the end of the film Val suggests there may be a way to rejoin the living, when he says, 'Let's see if we're able to live among the living, walk among the living.'

We started shooting, and then Jodie found out she was pregnant. Forest broke it to me - he'd gone to work and heard it on the radio! It seemed like the movie was doomed. But, like these characters, there was a disregard for all the signs along the way.

As a writer, I always tend to take the liberty and the great artistic luxury of a composite form of writing.

As an artist, you have to maintain focus and eliminate the distraction of second-guessing yourself based on the opinions of others.

Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.

Film acting has been a very pure experience, because you have to give the purest form of yourself as an artist.

However you arrive at the ability to ignore self-doubt - if you can acquire it or possess it or find it or discover it - move beyond self-doubt.

I can't escape being born in Pike County, Kentucky, grandson of a miner, Luther Tibbs, and his wife, Earlene, and traveling as a child up and down Route 23 between Kentucky and Columbus, Ohio, where I was raised, experiencing life via working-class people. Nor do I want to escape.

I embrace country music because of love, a love of what I came from.

I like order. It allows me to have chaos in my head.

I live out of cans a lot. But I try to indulge only in healthy canned food.

I played music and sang from my earliest memories. The first pictures of me show me wandering around with a guitar that was larger than I was, and it became almost second nature to me.

I'll never quit playing country music, or at least acknowledging it, always, as the cornerstone of what I am.

Ironically, the success I've experienced at country radio has left me ostracized from pop and other formats of radio.

Musicians exist independent of any of the marketing terms or the categorization.

My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.

My parents were not affluent people and were not - didn't come from the extremities of education. My mother had a high school diploma. I often think I so wish she'd come out of the hills in Appalachia and been able to go on to college. I think she would have made a wonderful teacher.

We share something in common with the fabric of the whole universe that connects us.

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.