I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music.
It's not for me to determine what a country artist has in common with a hip-hop artist. You go for those with long-lasting careers. And that's what I've had as my target all my life.
When I had my child, I planned on being with the woman I had him with for the rest of my life. If that doesn't work out, you have to see things from a different perspective.
I've changed my life in a lot of ways. I'm a mom, a wife, and a Christian. Some of the things I expressed in my early 20s aren't what I care to express right now.
My aunt took me to see 'Salad Days' when I was seven. This story of a magic piano that infects everyone who hears it infected me, too. It was a Road to Damascus moment in my life.
I am not brutal or cruel to animals. My mission has always been to save dogs - especially troubled and abandoned dogs. I've dedicated my life to this.
To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.
The first year I was sober was probably the worst year of my life. My immune system was screwed. I completely isolated myself. I was weak all the time. I didn't know who I was.
My wife says I spend my life trying to teach white folks. I'm not so sure I'm proud of it, but she's right.
I am not someone who is ashamed of my past. I'm actually really proud. I know I made a lot of mistakes, but they, in turn, were my life lessons.
I was kind of reflecting on my life and certain experiences, and you know, when I'm teaching and coaching my partners on 'Dancing With the Stars,' I sort of use those stories and anecdotes to help them sort of overcome certain fears.
My favorite sport, frankly, is college football. I'm a college football junkie, even though I'm associated with golf and like golf and have played it all my life.
People are very complex. And for a psychologist, you get fascinated by the complexity of human beings, and that is what I have lived with, you know, in my career all of my life, is the complexity of human beings.
Yes, I did shatter my leg, and it really changed my life, in a way. It wasn't much fun, but it did open me up, and as we all know intuitively, adversity can develop resources.
One of the lines from my books is about having respect for different minds, and if I had to have an epitaph at this point in my life, that would be it.
I don't see my old films, but I think of the characters I played as friends, like the women I meet in my life who made strong impressions on me. I remember them and they are part of me.
I love comedy. Playing the underdog, and getting the laughs is my form of entertainment. I could think of nothing different that I would want to be doing at this time in my life.
I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I'm going through or what's going on in my life at that moment.
My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realized that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to do with my life.
Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful, the formation of fixed habits of work.
The men have piled up in my past, have fallen trenchantly through my life, like an avalanche that doesn't mean to kill but is going to bury me alive just the same.
