It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don't think anybody has held this job who hasn't felt personally responsible for those being killed.

If the American people don't love me, their descendants will.

The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources--because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.

I just cut songs I love and that represent what I want to say. And if it crosses over, that's very flattering. It's cool to know that with people listening to rock and rap, I'm sitting on their iPods along with that stuff.

If there are people out by the bus, I'll come off the bus and sign autographs, too. I always want to be accessible. I always tell my fans, 'If I ever get on the bus and don't come off, it's because I'm under the weather or I'm really tired.'

When the show opens, fans can text to a number we flash up on the screen, and then we do a meet-and-greet with 60 to 80 people every night. It's something I love doing, and I would say that's probably more fans than most artists bring backstage after a show.

When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.

If I wake up one day and people tell me I'm not sexy, I'm not going to stop making good music and having fun. That 'sex symbol' thing is typically part of being in the limelight. You better be very talented in your music, but it's good to be nice to look at, I guess.

When you look into the eyes of your people out there that came to see you, that's when it's like, 'Yep, this is what it's all about.' This is why we don't sleep, and this is why we write songs and try to be the best. This moment right here onstage.

My thing is, when you put a bunch of rules on a tour, you have to hire three more people to enforce all the rules. So, with me, I want everyone to feel comfortable. It's a lot of little moving parts out here, and little hiccups will come. At the end of the day, the show's going to go on, and I want everybody to truly enjoy it.

Just really, really believe in what you're trying to do. Don't let people alter that. Let people advise you and lead you down paths to make smart business decisions. But trust your instinct and trust that overwhelming drive that made you put all your dreams and everything on the line.

I always want to make an album that lets people immerse in it, kind of like you get caught up in a good movie.

Nothing is more rewarding than to take a song, create it out of thin air and then watch it affect people.

You see a lot of people out there that say they're country, and they do their little things that are stereotypical country things, but being country is a way of life.

I don't give any merit to criticism. 'Country Girls (Shake it for Me),' I can see where people view that as sexist, but I just view that as having fun.

I'm excited to be part of a movement that's progressing country music. There's always gonna be people saying, 'It ain't country anymore,' but I don't get into that whole deal.

The people of the United States are more prosperous…because their government embarked later than other governments…upon the policy of obstructing business

The welfare of a people lies not in casting other peoples down but in peaceful collaboration.

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

It is the consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor.

Inflation made it possible to divert the fury of the people to 'speculators' and 'profiteers'. Thus it proved itself an excellent psychological resource of the destructive and annihilist war policy.

It is common with narrow-minded people to reflect upon every respect in which other people differ from themselves.

All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.