I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.

I've always been aware of having feelings that were pretty intense at times. I imagine most people have had that, or they wouldn't be human.

This is how it has been since time began: If you want to make something really worthwhile and true, then you have to suffer for it.

If something bothers me, it bothers me for a long time until I find a way to work it out. Music provided me with a means of working things out.

My guitar is really tempermental. I don't give up on it though, I'm close to my guitar!

I don't know what other people are like, I haven't been able to crawl inside anybody else.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

I don't describe myself as a Christian or religious, but I like to think that how I live my life is honest.

I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.

Turn off the TV and start digging around for information that's not from a corporation trying to make money.

For a long time I was interested in being a social worker. In a lot of ways I feel that that's all my music is, trying to help people.

I honestly don't listen to a lot of music - I spend so much time working at my own music.

I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.

Making the record was tons of fun, the most fun I've ever had.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.

I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards.

You know raising a family in the lifestyle of a professional athlete can be very difficult.

I love to see my family together. That's what life is about. It's about family.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Even though we were all celebrities to a certain extent, we all looked at each other as family.

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

I love my family.

I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life... though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

When I said I was going to audition for a film, I got a hearty laugh from all my family.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

I mean, I would never want to do anything to hurt my family, but then again I would never want to do anything to hurt myself. And I think they go hand in hand.

After a hundred years the son of the King then reigning, who was of another family from that of the sleeping Princess, was a-hunting on that side of the country, and he asked what those towers were which he saw in the middle of a great thick wood.

I was on Oprah's show recently talking about the people who impacted me the most. One was a teacher and one was my soccer coach. I didn't even go into my family, who had the most influence.

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

He said there is 80 of us, ready to come down and the next thing I knew is that Jo Brown dashed in and said your family has already moved and you have to move, the boat is ready to take you out. I didn't have time to ask, even ask a question.

We expect teachers to handle teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and the failings of the family. Then we expect them to educate our children.

I had an amazing experience working with great people. I had a great family, a typical family with drama in certain areas, and that's pretty much everywhere in everyone's life.

I come from a family of losers, and I've rejected my family as something I don't want to be like.

I think togetherness is a very important ingredient to family life.