American Quotes

I don't believe we're the party of big business.

I do not believe the American people are going to confuse hatred for passion.

I believe we're the party of small business.

I accept people for who they are and love them. That doesn't mean I have to agree or that I have to turn my back on the tenets of my faith and reject the tenets of my faith when it comes to homosexuality.

George W. Bush is not only a great president; he was a great candidate.

Frankly, I thought we would have lost the House by now.

Even as a partisan Republican, I'm not sure a 40-year run is healthy for either party.

But I think there was a sense amongst the House Republicans especially that we didn't just want to be opposed to Bill Clinton; that we wanted to tell the country what we were for and to brand ourselves in a more positive manner.

And so it was interesting for me to find myself very enamored of a Republican president, but Ronald Reagan was someone I thought captured the spirit of America.

Texas is now a cornerstone of the electoral college for Republicans.

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the guts.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It is easy to react if everything is going great.