I'm familiar with adversity.

If I would have thought like fans think, I'd be broke and brain dead and fighting everybody every weekend.

Norman Parke needs to stay off of Twitter before he gets himself in a fight he can't win.

This is a business. I'm a professional athlete. This isn't, 'poke somebody and start a street fight.'

This isn't a Toughman competition; you don't just fight everybody because they want to fight.

Korean Zombie beat me, and I was prepared that night. He beat me, he beat me that night.

You can't just go in and say, 'I'm going to be tougher that you,' you know? Heavy bags are tough, but I've never been beat by one.

You have to be tough. All these guys are tough. But at some point, you have to outsmart and outhink and outplan these top fighters.

I was a born fighter before I got technical, and that's still in me.

I don't usually talk crap about guys.

I need to celebrate life because I'm in a good spot, I work hard, and I am happy with who I am and happy with what I do for a living, and sometimes I just focus and overwhelm myself so much with the fights and getting better, that I just need to slow it down and enjoy life and enjoy training.

My goal is to prosper and be a world champion and make money and retire and say I did it.

I feel like my wrestling and jiu-jitsu is so underrated.

Years and years ago, like in 2006, my wife, I didn't have a car, she would drive me to weigh-ins, we would sleep in broken-down motels and I would fight the next day. Just me and her.

I'm never going to go down to 145 again.

I don't see myself ever going up to 170.

When your body quits on you, it doesn't matter how mentally tough you are.

Nothing in my life was ever easy.

I really work hard to stay in great shape and make weight.

I want a rematch with Cub Swanson, I think I deserve to be 100 percent and fight.

I want the title. But these hands are working hands, and sometimes you've got to get them dirty.

The side of town, the side of Louisiana that I grew up on, there's a lot of poverty.

I've put it all on the line every time, win, lose, or draw, and that's what I want to be left behind in my legacy.

I never took the easy route.

I've always fought the best guys.

I've never pulled out of a fight. I've never missed weight.

Every fight, every camp I learn about myself and I get better. But every fight I get better.

I feel like I can submit Khabib, but feel like I'm going to stop him. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I'm either going to knock him out or I'm going to submit him. I'm going to finish Khabib Nurmagomedov.

I want to entertain the fans and put on great fights and have 'Fight of the Nights' and have exiting matchups, but at the same time I want to be the undisputed world champion.

I don't want to have an asterisk next to my accomplishments for the rest of my life. I don't want everybody to say, 'interim champ' every time someone says Dustin was the champion.

Of course, every time I get beat out there, I want to avenge those losses. I'm sure every fighter does.

We were bunched up with Southern bands, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. We just wanted to make it clear we weren't a Southern band.

I don't know if it was a single-blade or one of those straight-edge razors, but I used to play in bands that were, like, show bands and would play different clubs, and, in those days, I would go to the barber twice a week.

I'm living proof that Hepatitis C can be contained and that ZZ Top cannot.

You know how a dog and his owner start to look alike after a while? Well, that's like me and Billy.

People shouldn't knock the synthesizer. It's an aid, and it depends on how you use it, just like any other instrument.

Yeah, playing live for me is the essence of what we do.

In each city there are different favorites. Whatever we do, we'll come off the stage and somebody will ask how come we didn't do 'Pearl Necklace.' At the next town, it's something else we didn't do that they wanted to hear.

When I was younger, I'd listen to a song and take it literally. I'd think, Boy, what a drag. How horrible, he must be really bummin'.

People are all the time telling me stories: they named their son after me, or more than likely their dog. Or they got a tattoo.

I think life is there for you to grab it and be positive. Just look for the good everywhere.

Vegas to me is a place like Hollywood or New York where you can walk around and people recognize you but it's like, hey, that's cool, and then we go on with our lives.

I'd go over to friends' houses and ask them to put on some Howlin' Wolf, and they wouldn't know what I was talking about. Then, when they would come over to my house, I'd play them some blues. Their parents wouldn't let them come back. The blues were still called 'race records' back then.

My major influences were primarily guitar players and bands; I started playing bass by accident.

Being a musician in Texas had its own set of risks.

Country music, like rock or blues, can move over into a lot of different areas.

Through the career, planned or unplanned - usually unplanned - we've taken different turns. And it's culminated in a worldwide following that's pretty substantial.

Every album is unto itself, so whatever sounds we need to come up with, like way back when, we needed horns. So we invented the Lone Wolf Horns, and we learned how to play horns.

I love movies and I'm interested in watching how they're made and everything.

Actually, my mother turned me on to the blues. We had Lightnin' Hopkins as well as Elvis Presley records.