When you say, 'Southern,' or you speak about a southern accent, there's always that drawl, and usually from white people. That's what people associate with the South. But we're all different. The black southern accent is different.
The fact that I have a Southern accent and write about a lot of rural things leads people to put me in the country category.
You know, so many people say TV makes you stupid. But it had the complete opposite effect on me. It kept me from having a really bad Southern accent.
The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.
I've written a lot about southern California, but I don't use the same characters. Leave the people in the songs in the songs, is my philosophy.
The people of the Southern States now own near five millions of these negroes, and they are worth to them near three millions of dollars.
I'm a Southerner - I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve. I guess if I'm forced to find a good side, I'm glad that people are talking about an issue that hasn't really been discussed all that much. I'm glad that people are talking about it from the black perspective and the white perspective.
Every Southerner, I think, knows people like Bill Clinton, maybe not quite as smart and maybe not quite as liberal, but kind of a glad-handing, country-club yuppie Southerner. The problem is we don't have labels for middle-class Southerners.
Writing about where I was from and the people I knew was not something that would have occurred to me early on, because like so many Southerners of that period - the Sixties - I rejected those things when I went north.
Government has the role of suiting people for freedom. People aren't made for freedom spontaneously. There's sort of a 19-year race between when people are born and when they become adults. And government has a role in making them, at the end of 19 years, suited to be upright, trustworthy repositories of popular sovereignty.
Rural Americans want leaders who help middle-class communities to plan and prosper over the long-term - not opportunists who reap the rewards for themselves, leaving nothing for the people who do the sowing.
People come up to me and say, 'It's too bad the space program got canceled.' This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened.
The beauty of the space station, and of human spaceflight, is that it is now at a level of maturity where you can invite people on-board, which is what I worked so hard to do on social media and all the videos I made.
We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.
For the industry we're starting now, for suborbital flight, there is no destination, so the spacecraft you go up in has to be large and spacious. That's why SpaceShipTwo is much bigger than SpaceShipOne: It needs to be because you want those six people to be floating around and enjoying themselves.
I never thought that I would become a staple in the Australian cultural diet. The equivalent of bread or milk, or a fine old Tasmanian Mauve Vein. I think it's because I talk about things that people dare not mention. I don't mean raunchy things or unsavoury things. I call a spade a spade - I discuss things in a realistic manner.
We're confronted with great darkness as a species right now as spiritual creatures on this planet. I don't think it's hopeless, and I don't want 'You've Never Seen Everything' to make people feel hopeless. But I think we've got to call a spade a spade.
One of the reasons I got really fat when I left home was because I thought rich people ate white bread and Spam. I also thought they could get processed meals, because we never did, so that was exciting.
Processed pig is white trash meat. Some people call it Spam.
I can remember standing in the middle of the field after the race and seeing the American flag raised and hearing 'The Star Spangled Banner' and all the people singing it. Then I walked off the field and just kind of enjoyed the feeling.
