If you disagree with me, fine! Because that's the great thing about America, we can disagree!

We toured that record for a year, which turned out to be the culmination of ten years of being constantly on the road. We were sick to death of touring.

Super casual music listeners. That's most of the people in the world. And you have to understand, that's why Top 40 radio exists. It's not there for people who seek out music and who love music.

There was never a golden era of American radio as far as I can tell.

But I think the one thing that I can say about us is that we're very consistent about certain things and part of that is our desire to do the very best work that we can and not rest on our laurels, or not allow formula to come into what we do.

I went through a period where I was really tired of seeing and reading about myself.

I've always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food.

I'm just not that fascinating a person to have had all those lives that I've written about.

Never eat broccoli when there are cameras around.

If you disagree with me, fine! Because that's the great thing about America, we can disagree!

Because the casual music listeners are the ones who turn on the radio and they don't really care what's playing, they just know that they kinda like it or it's easy to drive to or it's easy to sing along to or whatever.

On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing.

If I'm tired of me, I'm sure the public is as well.

My iPod that was programmed by Peter Buck. It has 7,000 songs hand-picked for me by him.

I'm not homosexual, I'm not hetrosexual, I'm just sexual.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.

When I get really hammered I take my clothes off. That's a sure sign. It's been a long time since the last time I did that. Probably a year.

So, when you divide the world into music lovers, music fans and then those people who are just very casual about their music, it's wallpaper to them, it's elevator music, it's just the thing that's playing in the background that helps them through their day.

So, we just kind of created our own thing and that's part of the beauty of Athens: is that it's so off the map and there's no way you could ever be the East Village or an L.A. scene or a San Francisco scene, that it just became its own thing.

So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we're kind of an international phenomenon.

We made part of the record in Miami, and I would go down to the beach, and not 20 feet from the water I see a fish that is at least seven feet long swimming close to the shore. I did not go back in the ocean the entire month.

When you meet a stranger, look at his shoes. Keep your money in your shoes.

My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am.

And I don't expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did - and really didn't - in the 1960s.

I think there were early critics who wanted us to change the world because the Sex Pistols failed.

I really wanted to be on Six Feet Under as a corpse. That would be hysterical.

When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.

Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.

They always want me to play myself and that's a big snooze.

There was a point in the '80s when I looked out at my audience and I saw people that - were I not on the stage - they'd sooner slug me as they walked by me on the sidewalk. And I realized that I was way beyond the choir.

We're absolutely American and distinctly so, I think. That's part of what people respond to outside of this country, part of the reason that we're such a huge band outside of the U.S., where we're not so popular now as we were 10 or 12 years ago.

There are people that very strongly identify themselves as gay and then lesbian, and then I think there are a lot of people who are kind of some percentage or some version of that.

But we're very much an American band and that's that. I think that's part of the appeal outside of this country and it might be part of the reason people turned away from us within this country, because familiarity breeds contempt.

Sometimes Im confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isnt obvious

My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am and I know what I am.

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

My focus is that firearms are handled safely and that we can continue to enjoy them here in North America.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

I'm about to become a member of the Chemists Society of America. I'm very proud of that.

It's a cyclical thing. When they make one, everyone loves them. Different genres come around in succession. People always welcome the western. It's America's genre.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that's what I'd like to do and that's what I hope to do.

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.

Gary Smith, when I came to America, taught me a great deal about racing.