But you know, the system almost destroyed itself while it was goin' on trying to destroy us.

Jessi is a great person. She really is. She's been a friend to me all through all my bad times, and she's understood what I was doing. She came up with that one saying, which was great.

But you know, the system almost destroyed itself while it was goin' on trying to destroy us.

I never have any problem getting enthusiastic with a good song and a good band.

I was king of the mountain for a long time, well, I don't want that no more. I like to perform every once in a while for people who want to see me, and cut albums of music that is what I'm really about.

Honesty is something you can't wear out.

Mainly what I learned from Buddy... was an attitude. He loved music, and he taught me that it shouldn't have any barriers to it.

I love Johnny Cash, and I respect Johnny Cash. He's the biggest. He's like an Elvis in this business, but no, he's never been the rebel.

We did an album one time called White Mansions, about the civil war, but it was written by a guy from England. His looking at it from over there and it not being a part of his history made it so he could be objective.

A lot of times they don't want to hear it. But you know, if some good is done to you, you should pass it on.

Besides that, I felt guilty. I thought for some reason... I was alive, and Buddy and those boys were dead, and I didn't know how, but somehow I'd caused it.

I didn't aim at anything except good music.

Now, I don't know how they judge all that, but if anybody in the world deserves to be in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Ritchie Valens does.

Finally, my manager negotiated a deal where I got to produce my own records.

You know, in the days when I started, if you had Chet Atkins' name on your record as a producer and it was on RCA, you could work the road. It didn't have to be a big hit record, it just had to have that on it.

Because Ritchie Valens WAS the real deal. He was only starting, but in the time he spent in the business, he made big impact. I don't know if anybody could have made a bigger one.

And the whole thing is that you're treated like a step-child. Here it was down here, everything in the black, because they were stealing, basically. Stealing from us old country boys down here.

Don't ever try and be like anybody else and don't be afraid to take risks.

I mean, I think we're put here on earth to make your own destiny, to begin with. I don't think there's anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

I may be crazy, but it keeps me from going insane.

But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened. I'm a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that's the way I feel about people who play on sessions.

So I'm not very popular here with those inside the system, as you might guess. I never wanted to be.

You know, I feel sorry for the young artists.

It was all devastating. I'd never dealt with losing anyone close to me, and I didn't know where to put it in my life. I was very young then. Buddy taught me so much in such a short time.

But Buddy was an upper. He was happy. He loved music, and he was really happy. I don't know... I don't believe in reincarnation at all, but if all that stuff is true, then he might have been on his last time around.

One thing is that I wasn't getting booked that well, and they had control over who got the awards, they had control over who sold. And they really did not want Willie or me, either one, to have a hit record. They wanted the money, but they didn't want us to be the ones.

Cuz I was never pretty anyway and never cared anything about that.

Now, I was on drugs, and that didn't help a whole lot. He hated that. That was part of where Chet and I had problems, so I take complete blame for that.

Chet loved artists. He did. But he was caught up in the system. He had two hats. He had to have 'em because he did two things: he was an artist, and he was an executive.

This world that I live in is empty and cold the loneliness cuts me and tortures my soul.

To me a guitar is kind of like a woman. You dont know why you like em but you do.

Androgyny is not trying to manage the relationship between the opposites; it is simply flowing between them.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

I am playing with the assumptions that we have in our everyday life when we are tripped up or fooled and we learn something, that makes things exciting - I am having fun with that stuff, but you have to manage it so it doesn't get too cute, that's what I trying to work toward.

'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.

Well, I think that those of us in public life that are trying to do a good job, and that are faced with this popular new game that the media has of being critical of everything that anybody in public office does probably are thin-skinned.

When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win.

I'd been trying for all of the eight years we'd been married to have a child, and finally I did.

Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.

I've always done food that can work in a set time frame. The message I'm trying to get across is, it doesn't have to take three days to do this. With planning, you can do a lot and really have quality food every day.

I meditate a lot, but I am constantly in pain. I'm trying to live with this. You just have to accept it.

I trained and trained and went up against Kurt, then being a world champion in '94, and after that I did Tommy's tour and then my tour and all this stuff and just trying to deal with it all. And now, I've just kind of backed off a little.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

Trying to give back a little bit is important.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.