Life ain't always beautiful, but it's a beautiful ride.

Let's be naughty and save Santa the trip.

You can be the moon and still be jealous of the stars.

I'll fill those canyons in your soul, like a river lead you home. And I'll walk a step behind, in the shadows so you shine. Just ask, it will be done and I will prove my love, until you're sure that I'm the one.

We sat around and I fed them barbecue and whiskey. And pretty soon everyone started to compete with each other on the guitars. It seemed the more everyone drank and ate, the more everyone got into it.

Life ain't always beautiful, but it's a beautiful ride.

Anytime something starts to feel like a popularity contest or not about the music, I'd rather just not be involved. I'm not a big high-fiver. That really gets to people around me when we have a No. 1 or something big happen. I'm not a big, 'Let's go have a party about it!'

Country was about character. Country's changed because of monsters like Clear Channel who bought up all the stations and sliced them up into formats. Our demographic is now the soccer mom.

Everything about the music industry takes away from you as an artist. They're always wondering what the next thing is: 'What do you have?' It's a very introverted process.

I don't want to hear songs about how sunshiny things are. I don't like songs that feel like radio candy... I like the ones that make you think, laugh or cry - they pull some kind of emotion out of you.

I love the intimacy of venues like the House of Blues. When everyone is packed in and so close to you, it makes you play differently. It's so much more fun to play because there's so much more high energy in a place like that.

I love the road. That's always been my goal. I've said that to many record labels. I want to make records. The road is my favorite. Some people hate the road, I love the road.

I really like the old stuff that I cut my musical teeth on, and I loved it when the industry was just like that, without really a genre. Today, country radio's more aimed at a demographic than a genre. It just softens everything.

I think you need to do something new to keep reinventing yourself.

I've always said I've wanted to be around forever. I never wanted to be the latest, greatest thing. I want to be like Willie Nelson - touring when I'm 70. To do that, you can't be the latest, greatest thing because those things fizzle out.

I've had fans come and knock on my door. I'm usually polite, but I'm usually very direct and say, 'It's not cool that you come here uninvited.'

I've never listened to an album once I've finished it. All I hear is what I should've done different. I beat myself up over it.

If you come on my property, I've got you from the second that you enter on. There's little lasers... my TVs come on in my room and fall just right on you. So, there's no way to sneak up on me. And I've got a loud dog.

If you date a musician, you're never, ever really gonna be first either. You're gonna be right behind the music and maybe right close.

If you're truly in a band and you guys have been together for a long time, there's a family bond that you have. In fact, I've talked about this with therapists, especially if you're talking about a relationship, because when you're with somebody, you're going to your family, and she's alone.

It's always performing for me. I write and I record so I can perform. It all ties to that. I've done it since I was a little kid. That's my absolute rush, is playing for different people every night, bringing something else to the table they've never seen.

My goal is to hit the gym every day I'm on vacation. Usually I just end up sleeping and drinking beer.

My whole back's tattooed. I just wanted a twist. I was always in punk bands when I was little... I think that's where the tie comes from.

Shoot, there's a committee to tell you everything at a record label. You definitely have to know who you are if you want to look like you at the end of the process. We've all seen people get record contracts, and by the time they're spit out by the machine, we don't even recognize them.

Sometimes if a song hits me really good the first time, I get sick of it. And by the 10th time I've heard it, it's just candy, and I don't like it anymore.

To me, country music's about life. It's about Monday through Friday. It's the blue-collar, 40-hour week, songs about life. It used to have more of a sound, but I think the heart of that's still the same. It's still American music.

When all your stuff gets smashed, everybody gives you new stuff. And when you've been playing the same guitar since you were like 12, that's a lot like dancing with somebody else's wife.

When I look into your eyes I still get weak And when Im this close to you I just cant speak And its hard to keep my hands to myself When I know I could never love anybody else.

Every storm runs out of rain, just like every dark night turns into day.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.