Jerry Jeff Walker

“Nashville is the business center. They forget that the bottom line of it all is still the song.”

“I'm a Texan. Some of me is still nestled up there in the Catskill Mountains: the summers I spent with my grandfather on the farm and the guys I played basketball with in high school. But then that was it.”

“The only way to know how much is enough, is to do too much, and then back up.”

“'Gonzo' means taking an unknown thing to an unknown place for a known purpose. But sometimes we're lost in an unknown place for no known purpose.”

“A lot of Texans go up to New York and stay there forever. If there are any two places with more individual characters, I don't know them.”

“You have to figure out ways to do things on your own. I do my own thing, and I don't pay much attention to what anyone else is doing.”

“I think it's real easy to be famous these days; it's not real easy to sustain success.”

“Taking over our own business and running it ourselves has tied us even more to our fans.”

“Well, we play Country music; we're just not sure what country it is.”

“In the '60s, I thought golf was bourgeois, so I didn't play at all for 20 years.”

“In the '80s I started running, staying in shape.”

“I always liked having a good time. I got into this business because I got fired from any job I ever had because I stayed out late playing music.”

“Texas is where I found my musical self.”

“Our audience is really upbeat. Likes to have a good time. They're not introverted or shy.”

“I don't try to write songs that will further my career. I write about things that I care about. I don't have a career as much as I'm having an adventure with a guitar. I never liked the business way of doing it. You have to follow some sort of instinct.”

“There seems to be a great propensity in this business to write tear-jerkers, 'You-left-me' songs. I thought, 'Why don't I count my blessings by looking at what I have?' I'm pretty much an optimistic guy.”

“New Yorkers have their own way of speaking, their own tempo, and Texans are a lot like that. As much as you think Texas is one thing and New York is another, they're very much the same.”