Date night is important, even if it's going to Schlotzsky's.

I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.

I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner... And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul... Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

I've always known from the time I was eight years old what I wanted to do. I would have been fairly content to be someone's lead guitar player.

I'm a huge, huge fan of almost everything British. I love 'The Office' - I was a faithful follower of that show before the American version.

It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music. They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music.

If you were to hold me to a standard of, 'What are you doing, singing about a scratch-off ticket at your level of success?' then my music's gonna be ridiculous.

I love being an enigma. Every time I'm tempted to respond to someone who tries to put me in a box, politically - you know, someone who gets on the Internet and says, you're pro-gun, or you're anti-gun - I stop and say to myself, 'This is great; this is what I wanted. I wanted to be the guy you can't figure out.'

There may be people in my audience who may not agree with me on some particular issue - you know, say, as a gun owner, they may not agree with me, or, you know, someone may not agree with me on a gay marriage topic. Any of those things. But those shouldn't be the reasons you listen to my music.

When I got married, I hired a great choir - the St. James Choir, an all-black gospel choir - to sing at my wedding.

No one dislikes LL Cool J. If you meet LL Cool J, you fall in love with LL Cool J. LL and I had mutual friends, and he and I had always talked about doing something. My fans know LL's music. And I love him - we're blood brothers at this point. We've been through the fire together. I know no finer person.

I love to play. When I'm off, I feel a little lost - like, shouldn't I be on stage somewhere?

To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way.

Country music has become the music that best represents the reality of American life.

I jetset around and play these songs and get to hang with some pretty amazing people, then I go home to a really great farm, though actually it's a disaster area of a farm at the moment. But it's certainly a blast. I wouldn't trade lives with anyone right now.

My life would be very puzzling to most people if they had to follow me around for a day or two.

Deep down, I'm just a West Virginia hillbilly.

That there's no more important decision in life than who you marry.

If you fall in love with somebody, then you're not even worried about your bills. Love can take your mind off of anything.

No one can make the album they made 10 years ago with a straight face. There are two reasons: one is you change as a person. To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way. And the second thing is these are different times.

I have a to-do list and I have a farm I care for, and things I like to do for fun - going to movies and all that stuff. It's a painfully normal life!

Anytime you do something from the heart, people just know it.

The nice thing about the world that I've been able to inhabit for the last couple of years is that I'm given a lot of freedom. Not all artists really get that.

You look out there and there's people that, their day is changed because of your contribution to it.