Month: August 2012

Merle Haggard Interview: the Last Outlaw

Some play it smart…. I had a ball.
Some of us fly, all of us fall.
“I looked at it,” he tells me, “and I couldn’t tell what it was about.”

For now, Merle Haggard is still flying. Sure, it gets harder to stay aloft. And sure, he can see the ground below, a little clearer and closer each year, patiently waiting for him. But long may it have to wait. Long may we hear the cantankerous flapping of his wings, and the whisper of truth he gives to the wind. And long may it be before even Merle Haggard has to fall in final, glorious protest.

–Chris Heath, Merle Haggard Interview: the Last Outlaw

GQ Magazine, 2005

What you can conceive, you can do

“That’s the problem with a lot of people”, he continued, “they don’t try to do stuff that’s never been done before, so they never do anything, but if they try to do it, they find out there’s lots of things they can do that have never been done before.”

“I guess, I’ve always believed that nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do. Most people think the opposite – that all things are withheld from them which they have conceived to do and they end up doing nothing.”

–Joel Runyon An Unexpected Ass Kicking

Advice to my 22-year old self

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity.

–Cheryl Strayed: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar