When I was a kid of six or seven, I used to get up on the stove woodpile for a stage and I'd put on the wildest show.

I used to get on a stove wood pile at 5-6 years old and I would have a piece of stove wood and kindling bark as a pick, and I was a star.

Smokey and The Bandit was just a lark. All we did was run up and down those Georgia roads wrecking cars and having the time of our life.

Music is the most powerful thing on this earth, and it's hard to be angry when you are listening to music.

I got my first guitar at age of 7 and never laid it down. Momma taught me G, C, and D. I was off to the races son!

Pray for intestinal fortitude, work hard, and keep the faith. Oh, and pray for good luck, you're gonna need it.

When I was a kid of six or seven, I used to get up on the stove woodpile for a stage and I'd put on the wildest show.

I have spent over 60 years bent over a guitar and to know that I wrote 70 compositions that masters have recorded, that makes me feel so good and full, and proud and thankful to the good Lord.

I am very grateful to God everyday that my eyes flutter open and I can jump out of that bed!

You can have music and it will stand alone by itself, but you can't have a movie without it.

I used to watch people like Richard Burton and Mel Gibson and think, 'I could never do that.'

I went around the corner to motion pictures.

When people ask me what my motivation is, I have a simple answer: money.

Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.

The zeitgeist is for cutting spending and balancing the budget. But I do not want the Republican Party to be perceived as putting the budget ahead of people, jobs and education.

People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways.

We have perpetrated a myth in our society that being brave means not being afraid, but that's wrong.

I wouldn't mind being the female MJ. I want to have major crossover appeal.

I'm absolutely delighted because I'm part of the process that has made Asians very much part of the mainstream fabric of Britain, whereas, when I first started, we were completely on the margin.

Another werewolf thing. Like most animals, we spent a large part of our lives engaged in the three Fs of basic survival. Feeding, fighting and reproduction.

Shutting down the government is not how you make government work.

I'm a very good storyteller; I have a lot of compassion for people. That's very useful for a novelist. A lot of novelists are snots. They're just mean people. I'm not a terribly skilled stylist, nor do I want to be. I want a lot of people to read one of my stories and go, 'That was pretty cool.'

Every film that I have done has a special place in my heart.

No one has probably helped me more with my narcissism than my dog.

I love different eclectic bands. I love Phoenix and Kimber.

I might have made more money if I had outsourced to India, and I knew I'd find it easier to hire senior managers in London. But I wanted to be in Stoke. What could be more satisfying than creating work for 3,000 people in my home town?

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

My theory about actors is we're all walking milk cartons. Expirations dates everywhere.

I'm not that big a fan of sampling. But I feel like if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it to where it's more of a reimagining of a track. The songs that I do utilize samples on, most of it you wouldn't even be able to tell what it was unless I told you.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads and has no patience with mere emotion.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

When I found out about the audition, I knew that I was going in for 'From Dusk Till Dawn,' but I actually didn't know that I was going to be reading with Robert Rodriguez.

I tend to vote Republican, but I don't like the hardcore views on either side, and I'm not in bed with anybody.

I really think there's no difference between an art piece made by a man and one made by a woman. Is it a good art piece or a bad art piece? Of course, if you're female, you're maybe dealing with different issues.

Like Humpty Dumpty, we can make words mean anything we want them to mean.

I don't think I'm ugly, but I never thought I was that special.

I was always super, super musical. So my parents recognized that and put me in choirs, piano lessons, and all that.