Keith Urban

“It's not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you're looking for songs all year long and you're writing all year long.”

“I think it took me a while to convince Nashville that what I do is genuine and my heart's in the right place, and I love country music.”

“I tend to write better when I'm not touring.”

“At the end of the day, the Grammys are about recognizing genres that are making an impact.”

“You're always in a different headspace when you make each record, so hopefully they're all different. You just pick up things that you wish you hadn't done on the first one.”

“Once we get into the groove, we're kind of like long-distance runners - that adrenalin kicks in for me and I just keep running - and I don't stop!”

“Being with my family is very important to me, and touring is very important to me, too, because it's who I am. It's what I do.”

“I don't swear much; I've taken those words out of my vocabulary, and having kids, you have to have two sets of language!”

“Country seems to be finding a bigger audience. Certainly an audience out of the general country scene is finding me.”

“You go through life experiences. Each record captures a different turning point in my life.”

“It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.”

“I've always been a pretty private, quiet kind of person and so I haven't had to change my life really at all, I don't think.”

“Red carpets are pretty unpredictable. You can go from one person asking you what you're wearing to the next person asking you about the situation in Haiti. It's the extreme juxtaposition, and some of the questions can throw me!”

“The records in the house I really remember were, well, Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman' and 'Galveston.' Even as a kid, I knew these songs were glorious. My dad also had records by Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Waylon Jennings, and then there was also the Eagles and Don Henley. Anything Texas, which includes Don Henley, was big.”

“My father's record collection was all country. That's how I was exposed to it.”

“Sometimes I just cry at random stuff!”

“I always wish I'd had more mentors, better mentors, wiser mentors, people who were proper professional working musicians to guide me as I was coming up.”

“I think the industry is oblivious to the fact that most people listen to all kinds of stuff. I personally don't know of anyone who listens to only one genre of music. It's vanity because no one does.”

“I love the beginnings of artists when all they've got is raw talent and nothing else.”

“Getting on the bus and touring was my life. And when that was not around, I felt myself a bit lost at times, because that was all I had.”