The difference between me and the newer artists is that I have the history with the architects, the masters that started the music. I know where the music came from.

It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.

I look back to when I got divorced in the late 1970s. When that happened, I was so broken up. After that, I decided to seek God for my life and my next marriage.

I'm not a goody-two-shoes. I'm just a father with four children.

Country and western is ignored by the intellectuals. They don't look at it as an art form. They think it's just somebody sitting on his couch singing about his life.

Maybe you're going to a concert thinking you're not going to hear anything but music. But you may walk away from there with an answer to a problem that you're carrying around with you that you didn't think you were going to hear about.

The difference between me and the newer artists is that I have the history with the architects, the masters that started the music. I know where the music came from.

I hate negative songs; I won't sing them. It doesn't matter if it's sold 2 million more albums.

Country's hip; it's cool music.

That's kind of the mission statement for the label: to try to do great music that touches people's hearts.

After 'Mosaic,' I think a lot of people didn't know what my next record was going to be. And that's what I love. I just love doing music because I'm not going to follow the patterns and formulas of Music Row.

Do excellent work for Christ. So that's my heart. It's always been. And I want to be the best I can be. I want to make a difference in my generation.

Even with the sun beaming down on me I'm not sweating in my mind. I'm not sweating in my heart or in my career.

Great music is great music, period.

I always had a standard of, back when I was doing the country music I always told people I would never record a song that I wouldn't sit down and sing in front of my mom and dad.

I always try to entertain folks with good clean fun and stories from my youth.

I had some good teachers. One of the greatest teachers I've had is bluegrass music: going back and listening to Bill Monroe's music, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs. When I was with Ralph Stanley I learned a lot from him.

I mean, I could tell that I really had... a precious gift. And I'm so glad that I have followed through with it and really used that gift and nurtured it, honed it, made it sharp and tried to use it as a tool now to make music and to make a living for my family.

I try to keep my heart and myself available for those little, 'God moments,' are what I call them, where someone calls the office and says, 'Would Ricky be interested in doing this?'

I've always moved by my heart. I've moved by the spirit of what I feel was right for me next. I always pray and ask God: 'What's the next thing? What am I supposed to do next?'

I've got tapes that I'm so thankful that my father made - old reel-to-reel tapes. I've got a ton of those things at home. He kept those like fine diamonds, I mean he kept them, you know, in a box and was very, very careful of them, you know.

It doesn't matter if you stick the name 'bluegrass' on it. I think people call things bluegrass that I wouldn't necessarily call bluegrass, but what they're calling country music today I'm not sure that I would call country music. But I love music and I try to encourage people.

The fall is my favorite time of year. I love the colors. The sun is out, you get warmth on your skin but there's the coolness of the breeze. It's really comfortable.

There's art in rhythm playing. Just find it. Make your own art. Find your place, and when it's your time to solo, it's your time to shine.

We should give the Lord the excellence He deserves in everything we do.

When I hear bluegrass today, I hear so many new sounds in it. It's almost like country music in a way.

When Jack White called and wanted me to do a video and play mandolin with The Raconteurs, I didn't know anything about The Raconteurs at that time.

But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

I got to sit down with people who I admired, and have conversations with some of the greatest thinkers and artists and performers. It's a huge privilege for me to be a journalist.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.

Because when the film was first mooted, the Beatles didn't like the idea at all. In fact they wouldn't have any part in it. And when Brian had committed them, it was part of a deal he did with United Artists, I think.

Artists are like everybody else.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

My proudest achievement has been the success of the shows and artists I have been involved with, because they were made in Britain.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

I didn't want to save art - I respected the older artists too much to think art needed saving. But I knew it was finished, even though, at that time, I didn't know what I would do.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I've never understood why artists, who so often condescend to the cliches of their own culture, are so eager to embrace the cliches of cultures they know nothing about.

I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I'm 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it's been of interest to me.

Let's look at people as artists and try to support them; just because Picasso painted a couple of bad paintings, that's no reason to say he's a lousy painter.