I am humbled for all the love of Indians I get from all over the world.

I am an observant. I like to observe people.

Music is my life. If music takes a backseat, everything will go away from my life.

I am constantly scared that I should not do or say anything that will hurt my fans.

I think when we truly love something, we get the same true love in return.

That's how I feel, oddly, when I walk on stage in front of 20,000 people, and it's crazy, the madness: I feel the most relaxed and free, and all of my worries and troubles just are gone. Just I feel the most present in that moment.

It's hard to make music when you're not excited about it. So trying new things and going for new things is something that I can enjoy doing.

I met Michael Jordan on a golf course! I don't even know what to say. I'm still freaked out that I met him.

I hung out with Merle Haggard on his bus, which sort of freaks me out. It was him and his wife. We played with Merle in Oklahoma City. I'm from Arizona, and we talked about Arizona, and he remembered playing for two dollars a day down there at a bar.

I hope fans walk away still feeling like their batteries are charged. I want fans walking away high-fiving strangers.

I remember somewhere in his 70s, my dad started wearing a nightgown - like an old-school grandpa gown! I can see how that might be somewhere in my future.

Honestly, I sleep best wearing nothing. But with kids, I've learned to sleep with underwear very close by, if not wrapped around one of my feet, so I'm ready to go if something happens.

Seven has always been my lucky number. It's on my guitar pick; in sports, that was always the number I was, and 'Riser' is my seventh album. With this album kind of coming to an end and having seven nominations at the ACMs, it feels like a bigger story in play for me, and it's the perfect number. I wouldn't have wanted eight!

I still feel like that 17-year-old-kid that fell in love with country music, but I also am allowed to write songs about being a man, too, which I think is the coolest place I've ever been in my life.

I started thinking about this truck and why do I still have this same truck? After all of these years, why am I holding on to that? I just starting thinking about other things: guitars, boots and jeans. I just had a tendency to hold on to the things that have meaning to me.

I get nervous playing the Opry still. You take that nervous energy and channel it into being amped.

I ask myself all the time, 'Why keep doing this?' If I wasn't exploring or finding something to write about that was personal or meant something, there'd be no reason. If I was ever making a record just to make a record, or ever just like, 'Just put something out there that someone will buy,' I would quit.

I listen to all types of music, but big rock records are the ones that, in the walk-up, make me wonder, 'What's this next set going to sound like?'

Everyone talks about new love all the time, but there's so much to draw from when you've been in a longer relationship. It makes me stick my chest out a little bit. It's like, 'I know what you've been through, but you don't know what it's like over here.'

Some people associate red with love, but to me, red is for an earlier stage of a relationship. Black is much deeper, to me. It's certainly the sexiest color.

I'm trying to call more and text less. I don't want to check my phone 5,000 times a day anymore. It was getting to me. I'm bringing 'old' back.

I went into the Verizon store the other day, and the salesman was pretty excited. He was like, 'Hey Dierks, what can I show you?' I said, 'The cheapest, lowest tech phone you have.' I think he was disappointed. Everybody else was running out for the new iPhone 6, but I got a flip phone.

I have so much respect for the genre of country music and for all the greats that have been a part of it. I'm a country singer, I'm a country fan, and I'm a student of country music.

I was like, 'Man, bluegrass - that's like Roy Clark playing banjo on 'Hee Haw.' I'm a huge 'Hee Haw' fan. But I didn't know about bluegrass. It seemed like old people's music.