Before I settled on music I wanted to be an archaeologist an astronaut all sorts of really diverse things.

I think I'm a music fan before anything else.

There's more good music being made now than ever before.

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

For instance I'm always fascinated to see whether given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

I like to comprehend more or less everything around me - apart from the creation of my music. It's an obsessive character trait that's getting worse. I don't switch the light on and off 15 times before I leave the room yet but something's going wrong.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals and fairs and karaoke contests and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely more beautifully more devotedly than ever before.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me that editing process feels like a form of play like a puzzle that needs solving and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.

Life is short. I'm 47 years old. I've got 10 years to go where I can be the best I can be. I want those 10 years to be precious not like before cranking two or three movies a year. I've made a ton of movies in my life but so what?

I worked so hard for so long - I did a lot of movies. I also worked a lot when my kids were smaller before they were in school.

Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter different kinds of movies.

A lot of times we're just sold these movies that are really cynically conceived and marketed and they just want you there opening weekend before everybody finds out it's not so good.

I kinda see my current position like this: Here's your five minutes in the toy store so you gotta do all the good movies you can before 'Chuck Woolery' rings the bell.

Before I'd written movies I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers - when you've got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people's ability to do that.

I've done movies with a sword before. But I haven't really been given the full responsibility of something like a Ridley Scott film.

I've never really broken this down before but in movies you almost have no connection to fans. And if you do TV you're kind of connected but they know you as the TV name not your real name. If you do radio there's more of a bond there. And then if you do a podcast it's like you're literally inside of your fans.

I was never into the popular school or clique or anything. Then I started doing movies when I was in high school so then I got popular. Then the girls paid attention to you who didn't before.

I wanted to be in Jim Carrey comedy movies before I met him. I wanted to be a comedian on Stage 19 yukking it up.

I made two movies before The Police had a hit record: I did Quadrophenia and a film called Radio On.

I just grew up watching a lot of movies. I'm attracted to this genre and that genre this type of story and that type of story. As I watch movies I make some version of it in my head that isn't quite what I'm seeing - taking the things I like and mixing them with stuff I've never seen before.