Clifton Collins Jr. Quotes

I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to.

I'll never forget when me and Jason Matthews wrote the line, 'Don't be a tape player hater,' in 'Country Man,' I don't think I ever laughed harder. We didn't know where we were gonna put that in a song, but we knew we had to make it into a song. I just remember laughing and being so proud of such a goofy little line.

There's room for everyone. There's room for pop country, for 'rock & roll' country, for stone-cold country, and everything in-between. Great music is great music.

There were no guarantees that country music, whose roots were in the South, were ready for Charley Pride.

I like myself better when I'm writing regularly. ... I was influenced a lot by those around me-there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields. ... I'm a country songwriter and we write cry-in-your-beer songs. That's what we do. Something that you can slow dance to...I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad. ... Most of the stuff I've read about me has been true.

The really pop country stuff can sound a little bland because they put in strings and horns and all of that.

I remember people would talk about Country Music like it was this sexist, lame thing. Well, no, because Dolly Parton is writing songs and playing her guitar and producing. She's doing it all and she's got hits on the radio.

George Jones was a big, huge name in our household. George Jones-he is considered country, but in every genre he is known. Everybody knows George Jones. But George has such a unique voice. And he made such timeless songs, like "Color of the Blues", just real hard-core country stuff.

I think if I could ever write with someone, I'd love to write a song with Loretta Lynn or Dolly Parton.

I someday hope to find the time and coin to invest more of my creative energy towards the visual media side of releasing music. I'd love to make short film videos pushing the conventional standards of what a country music video can be.

I started writing songs after I heard Hank Williams.

My songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way ... they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio.

Sometimes I was in a mood to write a song as if I was writing in my journal and reveal certain parts of me that I was ready to reveal.

This is real, this is your life in a song...this is country music.

You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.

One of the things that defines a country song for me is that it's honest. It's not putting on a tuxedo to go eat at the Burger King. It's about a song being emotionally true to itself.

It is in the midst of the city that one writes the most inspiring pages about the country.

The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

I think my music is definitely country but it's got a little bit of that rock flair about it. I always try to find the things that everyday people deal with in their everyday lives and situations in the songs that I sing.

If I don't see a music video to it while writing it, I just scrap it immediately. It's very visual.

Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business.

[Country Music] is the final destination for many punk rockers [...] Rockabilly is the mid-point and then [they] end up at Country [...] There's purity to that music and I think that appeals to a lot of punk rock people - the precision, the purity, and the directness of Country Music.

Everybody knows in the business how I feel about country music. I'm an old traditionalist. Then they just call me an old man and stuck in my old ways, but with all the fans I've got out there, I can't be all that wrong. I do love traditional country music. I love the good stuff.

I love writing songs where the name is the title.

Writing, madam, is a mechanic part of wit. A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.