Rodney Crowell Quotes

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Rodney Crowell

Profession : Musician

Birth : August 7, 1950

Favorite country singer of all time... Hank Williams... Well, then there's Willie Nelson. Can I have three? I can't do one. Then if I have three, I'll need five. Hank Williams for sure. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

Rodney Crowell

I read Nabakov for style, Mary Karr for heart and resonance of where I come from. She's from the same part of the world that I'm from. Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway, to read the masters.

Rodney Crowell

I think, in the middle of the '90s, I made a couple of records where I tried to figure out what I thought the radio wanted from me. They weren't my best records by any stretch of the imagination. It didn't take me too long to figure out, 'Whoa, back up, dude. Just go back to following your heart, and it will all be OK.'

Rodney Crowell

When I write a song with somebody else in mind, it's putting the cart before the horse. The way I write best is when I allow the song to tell me what it wants to be.

Rodney Crowell

When I was 22 years old, and I first got to Nashville, women or girls were objects. It was a conquest. My emptiness inside and the external manifestation of my ego was to somehow conquer women.

Rodney Crowell

I made this record in the late '80s called 'Diamonds and Dirt,' and it was a big hit. It had five No. 1's, and it was my commercial peak, really.

Rodney Crowell

In my 15 minutes of fame around 'Diamonds and Dirt,' it was not a healthy time for me because of my insecurity.

Rodney Crowell

Life can be either of two things: What it makes of you or what you make of it.

Rodney Crowell

I've said very openly that the first aspect of my artistry to arrive was writing. It took me a good number of years to find my voice.

Rodney Crowell

With 'Fate's Right Hand,' I think I reached a level of completeness in forming and articulating ideas at around the same time I reached a place where I could match it with my singing voice. It was a kind of coming together.

Rodney Crowell

Underfunded, underwhelmed, and out of their league from the git-go, my parents took to home ownership like horse thieves to a hanging judge.

Rodney Crowell

As a songwriter, metaphor is instinctual.

Rodney Crowell

I'm enough of a southeast Texas boy - there's enough white trash in my blood that when somebody gives me money to make a record, I feel like I have to please them instead of myself.

Rodney Crowell

I have a history, and I am proud of my legacy as a songwriter, all of the songs that I've brought forth into our culture. I'm proud of that.

Rodney Crowell

Adolescence in our culture for a young woman, for a girl, is a hard road.

Rodney Crowell

I don't make music for the radio. And when I was being played on the radio a lot, I didn't.

Rodney Crowell

I've had a nice career. I'm no David Bowie or Bruce Springsteen out there. I'm not an icon. I'm just a working artist.

Rodney Crowell

Sustaining a narrative in sentences and paragraphs is very different from songwriting. But the dedication to the craft and just the endurance that it takes, you know, to stick with it and believe you can pull it out and make it real and finish it, I learned that a long time ago writing songs.

Rodney Crowell

As I started to study old blues recordings and really pay attention to my favorites, it really started to come to me that all of my favorite pieces of music weren't produced, they were performed. The producer is nearly invisible: no thumbprint other than the composition and the performers.

Rodney Crowell

I'm a vulnerable guy.

Rodney Crowell