Jason Isbell

“For me, the things like the Confederate flag - I just don't think that it does anybody much good, and it certainly causes a lot of people a lot of pain.”

“The more you read, the better you are at writing, no matter what you're writing. A lot of songwriters miss that and don't see the connection there, and I've always felt like you're more able to communicate if you have a bigger toolbox to work with.”

“An incredible number of people have raised children who aren't too screwed up. Surely, I won't be the worst at it.”

“Terrible things happen all of the time, and they can happen in a second. The best thing is to be prepared to react. If you try to control every little thing, you're going to end up miserable - and you're going to fail.”

“I have my own definitions of success. And I have my own definitions of country music that, luckily, I share with more people than I realized before.”

“I've spent a lot of time in a rock n' roll band trying to fight off the fact that I was old enough to rent a car. And it's all sort of rushed in at once now. And I like it.”

“Sleeping on people's floors when you're 22 is fine. But when you get your life in order and have a family you want to keep and a certain level of health, touring bigger means you can keep going for longer.”

“No matter what you thought your plans were, that's not how things are going to work out, and that's the only way you can really, I think, live successfully.”

“I went to school for creative writing in college, and I wound up about six hours short of my degree.”

“It's not easy to sit down and open yourself up and say, 'This is how much I love you,' you know? It's scary to do that.”

“Rehab is like a divorce.”

“The Police could get away with doing an entire record with really no audible reverb, which I have always admired and thought would be a lot of fun to try to re-create.”

“I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they're the guy who wrote that. You've got to be careful; if you don't want that to happen, don't write those songs.”

“When I was writing 'Southeastern,' I'd just recently gotten sober. For me, that was a major turning point in my life. It changed things I did on a day-to-day basis. My whole routine was upended. It took me some time to get used to that and figure out how do I keep myself entertained.”

“I like not having to worry about paying the bills, but I have to watch myself because I don't come from money.”

“You always have a lot of time on the road, and you have to fill that time up with something.”

“When I wrote those first songs for the Truckers, songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day,' those were strong songs, very strong songs. But had I been in the position of writing an entire album at that point in time, I don't think the whole album would have been of that kind of quality.”

“Every time I'd get a job, they'd say: 'You'll be good at loading trucks.' I couldn't explain that there was more to me than carrying things.”

“My wife may be the role model for our daughter in some ways, but I think I represent what she'll put up with. You know, I think one day she'll say, 'OK my dad behaved this way, so if whoever I happen to fall in love with behaves this way it's got to be OK because I love my dad.'”

“I don't care what 'Pitchfork' says. They write from a place that's a little too self-aware for me to really give a damn about what they're talking about.”