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.

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.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You've been with me on every road I've taken. My scar and my protection.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

That friend a great man's ruin strongly checks, who rails into his belief all his defects.

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

I have a friend in New York who's a stylist and I went over to her place because she's got a lot of clothes. I basically ended up wearing most of it. So it's all stuff that I brought over.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.