My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It’s when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

Life must be lived as play.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the ‚Lord God.‘

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

It’s life isn’t it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

I’m 31 now. I think I’m beginning to understand what life is, what romance is, and what a relationship means.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

I wish they would only take me as I am.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

The only length of life that seems to satisfy the longings of the human heart is life everlasting.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

Life is wasted on the living.

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn’t us. Don’t be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life.