When you're young, you don't have any experience-you're charged up, but you're out of control. And if you're old and you're not charged up, then all you have is memories. But if you're charged and stimulated by what's going on around you, and you also have experience, you know what to appreciate and what to pass by.

I was just 20 years old when I wrote Broken Arrow.

You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.

People ask me who is my favorite country artist. I say, you mean besides George Jones.

It's always weird when things are targeted for young people, yet they're driven by people that are like 40 years too old. It can't be like this 70-year-old Jewish man that doesn't leave his desk all day, telling me what the clubs want to hear.

It's sort of like my past is an unfinished painting, and as the artist of that painting, I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again.