And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know.

With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish.

Well, more than me saying to the rest of the country music industry there is not enough traditional country music - that is not necessarily the statement in truth. I think more so that I, me, missed it more than anything else.

The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.

I do not like being famous. I like being normal.

When all is said and done the only thing you'll have left is your character.

So I didn't have anything to do with picking the songs, but I got to musically take them in places I thought might be interesting, so it was a real neat collaboration among the three of us.

It really does take a lot of time to make records, to be in the studio and do all that stuff.

But you know the thing that I thing oftentimes gets ignored and neglected is there was 10 or 12 years of life before I met Amy and before she met me, where you know, whatever happened was probably going to happen some day.

I had just lost my dad and I remembered all the songs we used to go and hear at concerts, and the records around the house and sometimes we'd play together.

It is easy to react if everything is going great.

I am not struggling. What I do, it is what I do.

It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.

Whether it is successful or not is not the exercise for me. It is not up to me. It is out of my hands now. I am not going to in two years have hindsight and say I made a big mistake.

I mean, look at her. Any idiot, you know, would quite taken with Amy.

The real amazing thing about all of this is I think I've maintained the mentality of a musician throughout it all, which I'm proudest of. And I'm still playing on people's records and singing on people's records.

It is not that I don't like contemporary country music because I do. I love it. I have recorded a lot and have had great success recording records that have not been very traditional country records.

I made records in the past that are as traditional as any other country records that have been made, but at the same time the records have a contemporary slant on it too.

Yes, the companionship is amazing. You know, you can get that physical attraction that happens is great, but then there's an awful lot of time and the rest of the day that you have to fill.

I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

I've always been more drawn to being normal than being famous.

Well I think in all the thirty years I've been doing this now and being gone from home and all that stuff it's really, it's not about what I've achieved and if I've become a better player, or played better ten years ago than I do today.

My last two records that I made were both quite pointed in one direction and I think I do my best stuff when it's all over the map, when there's a couple traditional things, a couple pretty rocking things.

This record for the first time - feels like a record that really represents my whole entire life and instead of just a period of my life. And it is really kind of eye opening and it makes me feel really good to hear this record and hear all the years.

Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you'll have left is your character.

I formally proposed. I'm a good Southern gentleman.

The funny thing is, people's perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they're still going to read what they want to into it.

This is just strictly me wanting to make a record that is the real deal. It is all the stuff that I have learned and know that I remember. It's what I perceive as country music is about.

I am responsible for me. I can kind of take care of what I need to do and should do what I like to do.

You learn a whole lot more about a person if they have bad breaks and all those kind of things.

And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know.

Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only thing you'll have left is your character.

I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally.

I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.

Please do not ask me to talk about my divorce. Mr. Ziegfeld and I are such very good friends. It is only a little matter quite between ourselves.

Divorce is the psychological equivalent of a triple coronary bypass.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.

There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.

Anybody who's been through a divorce will tell you that at one point. they've thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn't that major.

I'm not saying that people should not divorce, but at the rate at which it happens here is sick. The kids, they suffer. I don't care what anyone says.

With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish.

Sometimes divorce is better than marriage.

To get over my divorce, I got a prescription to live at the Playboy Mansion for a while.

The day I initiated divorce proceedings against Michael Farmer, I was ready to retire to a desert cave and rethink my life.

Peace, of course, is different from divorce; indeed, in essential respects, divorce is the opposite of peace.

My parent's divorce and hard times at school, all those things combined to mold me, to make me grow up quicker. And it gave me the drive to pursue my dreams that I wouldn't necessarily have had otherwise.

As soon as she gets her divorce one of us is going to marry her. We don't know which. She is about as beautiful a woman as I ever saw, and very witty and well-informed, but it would cost a good deal to keep her in diamonds.

I believe I went through a divorce. My relationship with Ellen is no less significant as a marriage than my relationship to Coley.