Johnny Van Zant Quotes

Country music is the people's music. It just speaks about real life and about truth and it tells things how they really are.

I draw inspiration from anything and everybody and that's what country music is to me... real life stories and real life emotions.

Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

I'm just a normal guy and blue-collar historian, and people keep tuning in.

I just love real characters; they're not pretentious, and every emotion is on the surface, they're regular working people. Their likes, their dislikes, their loves, their hates, their passions; they're all right there on the surface.

There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see.

More people work at Walmart than anywhere else in the United States, but you wouldn't know that from our literature. I'm trying to get at the reality of this country by portraying the lives of many of my friends who I left behind in Pittsburgh.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

I adopt a very simple approach. I observe and reflect real life and ordinary people and sooner or later that raises a laugh.

I think once you meet me, you realize I'm not necessarily some soft yoga guy. I've been on the picket line. I've been in the union halls. I'll drink a Miller Lite with you.

Physical labor, manual labor - if you can stay close to those folks, there's always plenty to write about, 'cause their issues are real issues.

I'm a big fan of Springsteen. Obviously, his social commentary is very powerful for me. I like his album 'The Rising.' It's not a new one, but it sticks in my mind because of what it says to me.

Writing about conflict has provided these dramatic opportunities to talk about really substantial moments in a person's life. I'm not writing about superheroes; I'm writing about ordinary people.

I want to keep telling stories of ordinary people.

I often find in the film world, that it's very self-referring. If you talk to someone about films, they talk about them in terms of other films - rather than as something that happened to them in their life. And I'm really keen to get back to film as a reference to real things, not necessarily to other films.

Hip-hop had become overly aspirational and shiny, full of vivid technicolors. Cosmetic fronting was not part of the ethos of our get down. Our get down was more blue collar. Our aspirations were to shine a light on the plight and experience of the inner cities of America.

The benefit of having a story that takes place in the real world is that you don't have to invent the real world. It exists.

I feel like the albums I grew up listening to - for example, Eminem, Lauryn Hill, Christina Aguilera - they all spoke about real stuff that was happening in their life and everyone else's life.

I just wanted to write about stuff that was happening in real life, and that's not just love songs about your girlfriend.

Social realism takes research.

DDP was the common guy, the everyman, a blue-collar guy from New Jersey. He represented something that the average person could believe in, in a way that was a little unique.

The American writer has his hands full, trying to understand and then describe and then make credible much of American reality.

If it's present in the life of the character, I'll write about it. Kitchen, bedroom, church, I'll follow a character wherever they go.

I think people relate to Skynyrd; it's a working class band. They're just songs with messages. To this day, there's never been a song written that didn't have a message.

I have a working-class approach to music.