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

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.

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

So its true when all is said and done grief is the price we pay for love.

Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.

It's a battle to be seen in the world of advertisers and in the world of business as a serious force.

You don't know what thirst is until you drink for the first time.

The living cell almost always contains, locked in its interior, the visible or invisible products of its physiological activity or its nourishment.

The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.

I had known a couple of people in college who went off the rails, who had significant bouts with mental illness.

Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend.

If it pleases you and you can write at all, it's gonna please somebody else.

At the same time as we clearly condemn actions of violence by groups in Palestinian against Israel.

Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.

I have to say that whatever decisions I make, I really do think that movie making is a director's medium. They are the people that ultimately shape the film, and a director can take great material and turn it into garbage if they are not capable of making a good movie.

I bring my ukulele everywhere I go, play a little music in the park, always have it with me.

Inventing is something that has always come very natural to me. As a child, I was always fiddling with things, making contraptions. I'd see something, go home, and try to make something even better.

I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle, so all is peace.