I'm not good at remembering things, in general.

When I was a mailman, writing songs was my escape from the regular world, and now writing songs is my job. And I've always been one to avoid my job.

I wrote most of 'Hello in There' in a relay box, which looks like a mail box, only bigger. Sometimes, it was so cold and windy on my mail route that I'd go inside the relay box and eat a sandwich, just to get away from the wind. I remember working on 'Hello in There' inside the relay box.

In the Army, I was very good at avoiding my job!

I think the best duets are those where there's a dialogue back and forth, and then the two singers go into a thing together.

Some voices don't blend. They just kinda rub against each other.

All the girls over there in Ireland are well versed in American country music. Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline are like king and queen over there.

Even when I was coming up in the singer-songwriter ranks during the early '70s, I thought that people who were stylists and stuff shoulda still been up on the pedestal. I mean, it's fine to recognize people who write songs, but it kinda got out of hand, you know?

You get to thinking that because you've written 50 or 100 songs, you think maybe you know how to do it. But when they're not coming along, you're just as in the dark as you ever were. When they're coming along, there's nothing to it. Sometimes it's so easy, it's like you're a court stenographer.

I think it shows when you have to work too hard on a song.

I don't concern myself with where I fit in. I just keep my head down and keep doing whatever it is I'm going.

I never fit in with straight country. I never really fit in with rock n' roll. I've always been somewhere in between all this stuff.

I don't like to see Christmas trees torn down.

If some part of the review is true, those are the ones that sting.

When I'm making my own record, it's real work for me.

There's only two things. There's life, and there's death.

I can't really sit around and talk with people who believe that the Bible is the way it happened, because that's man-made. I'm a writer, too; that's how I look at the Bible. Like, 'I could've written a better version than that,' you know? At least a more interesting one, and then maybe more people would go to church. I could definitely do a revamp.

I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness get all swirled up inside you.

I found it easier to make up songs than to learn other people's songs.

The Songwriters Hall of fame, that's the one all the big-time writers get into, the really great stuff, the Broadway stuff and all that. That would be something, to get your name in there.

I started out in the folk music world only because of the way my songs were written and performed, with just an acoustic guitar, but I always related to the rock n' roll lifestyle.

I was kind of shy as a lad, and a lot of things that made me laugh, I found, did not make other people laugh.

I guess what I always found funny was the human condition.

There is a certain comedy and pathos to trouble and accidents. Like when a driver has parked his car crookedly and then wonders why he has the bad luck of being hit.