When I came to DreamWorks, I was in bad trouble. They were in bad trouble. They were millions of dollars in the hole and a few days from closing their doors. I was on my last leg.

When I came to DreamWorks, I was in bad trouble. They were in bad trouble. They were millions of dollars in the hole and a few days from closing their doors. I was on my last leg.

Don't compromise even if it hurts to be yourself.

Well, I couldn't do the day-to-day stuff of being a politician or anything, but I just think everybody should have an opinion and everybody should vote, and that's what we're built on.

I say if you're going to take a chance on something, you just go full balls to the wall.

I've always said I can't tell sometimes that people even have an album out until I see them nominated for a Grammy. I think country gets dumped on across the board by the Grammys.

I have drawn a very close bond to all the military people.

Everybody should have their own thing, and if he don't want to be a role model, that should be up to him. In the right situations, I can try to help and be a role model, but I'm still gonna speak my mind, and if that affects the role-model deal, then too bad.

You know, I'm pro-troops, but I'm not pro-war.

My mom taught us the Serenity Prayer at a young age.

We turned what is virtually a glorified independent label into one of the powerhouse labels in the town.

Here's the thing. Just because you're pro-troops doesn't mean you're pro-war. And just because you're anti-war doesn't mean you're anti-troops. Just because you don't support the war people think you are anti-troops and you are a bad guy.

I always vote for the guy I think can get it done. And it ain't nobody's business who I vote for, but I voted for Clinton twice. And that just blows people's minds when they hear that.

I play golf with my shirttail out. I own a golf course because it's very, very close to my house, and I don't want to drive 45 minutes to the north side of Oklahoma City to play golf every day. I have race horses 'cause I love horses and it's my hobby.

I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say, 'Which of these things do I want to record?'

I write all year, and at the end of the year I put an album out. And if sucks, it sucks, and if it's good, it's good. I just let it lay where it lays. It doesn't stop from doing another one next year.

I'm influenced by all kinds of music. I have a very diverse iPod. You never know if I've got it on shuffle. You never know what you are going to hear next. I like all genres.

I'm into hip-hop, rap, country, blues, gospel, old school, new school... whatever... pop. If it's really good, I like it. I don't have to be told what to listen to. If I like it and it's good, I'll listen to it.

If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.

In the years that I've seen concerts, when I've paid to see somebody I want to see, there would be a certain amount of songs I'd want to hear. So whether it's stuff I want to play every night or not - or stuff I've been playing for years or stuff you get tired of playing - you have to play what people pay for and make it fair for them.

It's like pulling teeth to get me to do photo shoots. And I don't mind doing interviews if they're by phone, but I hate to go sit down and have to meet somebody somewhere, you know what I mean.

There's a band of studio session - hot players - that play on my albums... They're an eclectic bunch of misfits that I've worked with for years and years.

We try to buy as much American-made shirts as we can and stuff to sell. It's very difficult to cover every base as much as our country has been saturated with foreign products.

When you've got an extra gear in your head where that's all you do, you've constantly got a little radar up. ... And when something hits that strikes that beeper, hits that radar, it's like my song skills kick right in and go, 'Oh, OK, there's a song in that.' And then I start trying to figure it out.

Writing is not work. In fact, there's nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.

Writing songs and looking for ideas is like blinking my eyes. It's an involuntary muscle. I do it without thought.

Dont compromise even if it hurts to be yourself.

I'd catch moonlight in a bottle, if we could drink a toast to hapiness.

But no, I don't generally have trouble with spelling mistakes.

Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.

Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.

I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

If I'm alone too long I think too much, and I'm not interested in doing that. That won't lead anywhere good, I'm sure. If I'm busy I tend to stay out of trouble. An idle mind is the devil's playground.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.

It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.

When you have a good script you're almost in more trouble than when you have a terrible script.

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is.

I do have trouble with titles.

Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.

The trouble is it's very difficult to pin-point the most important thing because Aids affects everyone in different levels of society, differently and you have to respond to it differently.

When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.

I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But it wore me down. By the time I was 18, I was done. I didn't want to live the life any more. I needed to develop past the point that busking takes you to.

The way Americans understand and treat other peoples almost guarantees that the world will suffer more trouble.

I decided he'd changed so much that a whole new book was required and that book actually I can say so was the first to say that the marriage was in trouble and the Prince didn't like at all and my book was being serialized in the Sunday Times over five weeks.

It's like Samson and Delilah: watch your back, because trouble could be the person you're sleeping with.

Making my class laugh and getting in trouble. I was the class clown.

When I came to DreamWorks, I was in bad trouble. They were in bad trouble. They were millions of dollars in the hole and a few days from closing their doors. I was on my last leg.