If I had a choice, and there was a "Y" in the road, I would always take the one that was more fun as opposed to the one that might make me more money.

I think I'm most proud of my family right now. I'm more into that then I've ever been. It also gives a new area to draw from in creativity with my songs.

The Captain just gave us our orders, and Mom we must carry them through. I'll finish this letter first chance I get, but for now I'll just say I love you.

I enjoy the videos with the sound off, where you can look at the belly buttons and everything. Really some pretty girls, but I don't know about the music.

We are under [government's] control, and if people don't realize that, they haven't looked around. And if they're not paranoid, they haven't thought about it.

When you get to readin' about where the music and John Steinbeck and all those people like that come from, the further you go the more interesting it becomes.

The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn't seem like there's anything happening like that.

There's been periods of broadcasts in the past where you could see all ages of entertainers, ranging from George Burns to Shirley Temple. That's not the condition now.

It makes my wife mad, you know, she wants me to stay home all the time. But its what I've done all my life and I think when I quit doing it I'll probably go away pretty quick.

Heaven knows that alcohol is the worst thing in the world, but it's debatable whether cocaine is worse than caffeine or whether it's the same thing and they just changed the name.

Well, I'm kinda like George Carlin. I think that there ought to be a time where everybody should have all the drugs they want and there'd be nobody in charge, sort of like... now!

I'm proud to be an Oakie from Muskogee, a place where even squares can have a ball. We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse and white lightning's still the biggest thrill of all.

I was 48-years old before anybody talked me into it for medicinal purposes, instead of some of these drugs that they give you that will lead you to heart surgery and things of that nature.

There's a rumor that there may be an attempt at organizing a possible script for a series on my life, which, when you look at my police record, you'd have to have more than one hour to tell the story.

HAG Records, is a company that I've owned. I've had a couple of gospel releases on it. We developed a pretty good distribution setup there and we do have something to use in case they don't want to sign us.

When I grew up there wasn't air-conditioning or anything of that nature, and this old car had a wall thickness of about ten inches. So we had a little warmer house in the winter and a little cooler in the summer.

Sometimes if you get 'em too drunk they don't pay no attention to what you're doin' anyways, so you might as well just do old songs. But if you get one that's paying attention, sometimes we'll do some new material.

Women are God's last creation. You suppose he's saying, "What should I do to follow this?" Well, it's really a head -scratcher. I think women are absolutely wonderful. I think this world is going to be governed by women.

They shaved a little piece of bone off my small toe. You see, you balance yourself a certain way and this toe had grown under the other ones. So he cut it loose, where I could balance myself and it makes me walk straight.

My second wife Bonnie Owens and I worked together after we divorced for a period of maybe 20 years. And I managed to stay friends with another wife. And then there's one that I don't mess with. Everybody's got one of those.

We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope.

It's been said that Bill Gates has come up with something that'll be released in December that's gonna put a lid on counterfeiting. If that's a fact then it's really interesting to own your own product - with all the potential methods of downloading.

I think it was Tommy who told me, 'When your song is called 'XYZ' or whatever, every line has got to make sense against your title.' He showed me little methods of proving to yourself whether the line belongs, and ways of finding out whether you were able to get more out of a line if you tried.

Keep your opinions to yourself. I think it's important that I stay neutral on politics and remain hard to understand. I don't want to be pigeonholed as conservative, liberal, independent or anything. I back the man for the things the man believes in, not whether it says "R" or "D" down there beside his name.

I've always known that I was a gifted person. ... I've always felt like I would be punished, severely, if I didn't continue to make use of that gift. It's very important that you don't let the muscle get flabby. It's really hard, as an old human being, to press as much weight as you pressed when you were a kid.

We're turning into the society that is accepting the force-feed. I don't quite understand why we're going for the things we're going for. There's no process of elimination anymore in music. They have these grooming schools, these things, and they're turning out these clones, and the music is sounding so refined that it's not even interesting.

In my life there were a lot of situations where I could have been killed or some officer might have been killed chasing me, a lot of things could be different. Now, you know that's experience you can't buy. And it's there in my rearview mirror and I can refer to it in my writing. I have the experience to talk about things some people only imagine.

There's two or three kids out there trying to make good music, and the rest of them sound like it's been strained through some kind of white toast or something. It all sounds just too neat and perfect, with no surprise to it at all. No story, no nothing. It's like building cars, like an assembly line. It doesn't sound like anything that came from a guitar.

I think we have to have capital punishment, I think there has to be something to contain certain people. Those deterrents I think are necessary, especially in prison. You can threaten people for just so long, but they can flip you off and do what they want to; but not if they have to die. I hate it, though, the thought of the death penalty is terrible, but it's completely necessary.

There are so many conditions to programming in America, where it's dominated by these people that own 800 radio stations that have no idea who to play and who not to play, and they listen to somebody or read somebody else's programming sheet and go by Buck Owens' opinion or something. Eight hundred stations are controlled by some guy that doesn't have a clue as to what to do about music.

I just follow my nose, and instead of letting someone run my affairs and probably make me wealthy within a matter of years, I've just kept the board of directors down to zero. I make all the decisions, and they can't all be right, and my lifestyle is very expensive, so that means I have to work a lot. It's the opposite side of the coin from sinking back into the recliner and becoming somebody they bury.

The thing that bothers me the most is the recklessness and greed of the local ranchers, who run too many cattle back here, choking with waste the creek that runs through my property. There's certain times of day that the cowboys like to send them turds down the river. Them f**kers piss me off. if you gotta mess up the ecology of the world in order to raise a bunch of cows, well eat somethin else. I'm not a fan of the cowboys.

This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Fear's the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That's not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that's slipping away.

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