Top 56 Quotes & Sayings by Vince Gill

With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish.

I do not like being famous. I like being normal.

Whether it is successful or not is not the exercise for me. It is not up to me. It is out of my hands now. I am not going to in two years have hindsight and say I made a big mistake.

I formally proposed. I'm a good Southern gentleman.

You learn a whole lot more about a person if they have bad breaks and all those kind of things.

The real amazing thing about all of this is I think I've maintained the mentality of a musician throughout it all, which I'm proudest of. And I'm still playing on people's records and singing on people's records.

This is just strictly me wanting to make a record that is the real deal. It is all the stuff that I have learned and know that I remember. It's what I perceive as country music is about.

I had just lost my dad and I remembered all the songs we used to go and hear at concerts, and the records around the house and sometimes we'd play together.

It is not that I don't like contemporary country music because I do. I love it. I have recorded a lot and have had great success recording records that have not been very traditional country records.

So I didn't have anything to do with picking the songs, but I got to musically take them in places I thought might be interesting, so it was a real neat collaboration among the three of us.

This record for the first time - feels like a record that really represents my whole entire life and instead of just a period of my life. And it is really kind of eye opening and it makes me feel really good to hear this record and hear all the years.

But you know the thing that I thing oftentimes gets ignored and neglected is there was 10 or 12 years of life before I met Amy and before she met me, where you know, whatever happened was probably going to happen some day.

My last two records that I made were both quite pointed in one direction and I think I do my best stuff when it's all over the map, when there's a couple traditional things, a couple pretty rocking things.

I made records in the past that are as traditional as any other country records that have been made, but at the same time the records have a contemporary slant on it too.

Yes, the companionship is amazing. You know, you can get that physical attraction that happens is great, but then there's an awful lot of time and the rest of the day that you have to fill.

I am responsible for me. I can kind of take care of what I need to do and should do what I like to do.

When all is said and done the only thing you'll have left is your character.

I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

I've always been more drawn to being normal than being famous.

I mean, look at her. Any idiot, you know, would quite taken with Amy.

And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know.

It really does take a lot of time to make records, to be in the studio and do all that stuff.

I am not struggling. What I do, it is what I do.

Well I think in all the thirty years I've been doing this now and being gone from home and all that stuff it's really, it's not about what I've achieved and if I've become a better player, or played better ten years ago than I do today.

The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.

Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you'll have left is your character.

The funny thing is, people's perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they're still going to read what they want to into it.

It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.

Well, more than me saying to the rest of the country music industry there is not enough traditional country music - that is not necessarily the statement in truth. I think more so that I, me, missed it more than anything else.

It is easy to react if everything is going great.

I never aspired to be up front. When I was a kid, I didn't ever look in the mirror with a hairbrush going, "Hey, I'm Elvis!"

We all get caught up in the process, especially when you have a wave of success. But to me, being creative is not about rehashing everything you've done over and over. It's to continue to grow, continue to get better.

I've never been in the studio where it felt like I didn't have a voice. Whether I was co-producing or producing by myself, this community is the one place where I really see democracy at its purest.

There ain't no future in the past.

A lot of people play to impress, but the really gifted ones play to move. That's the greatest point of ever doing this.

I've always been the high harmony singer. It's never my job to know the verses! But I know the chorus of every song ever made.

It would be fun to go back and see where all my songs stopped, because I think I'd have every number in the top 100. It never ceases to amaze me. It still hurts when one doesn't work, because you put your heart and soul into it.

Even when I'm touring, I feel like a sideman ... everybody's working together. We get to play longer solos; it's not just "Here's the record! Thank you for coming Goodnight" ... it has always had a "band" feel instead of being a singer and his backup band.

You can't define the ache that's in George's voice. It's just something inherently him. It doesn't need definition. It doesn't need clarification. It doesn't need a lot of things. You just sit back and appreciate it. It's just greatness.

When you lose people that are close to you it brings everything into focus, and the rest kind of gets put on the back burner.

When I look back, I don't remember the best of the best. I don't remember arena shows with 20,000 people. I remember funky little bar gigs where nobody shows up. The weirdest of the weird are what you retain.

My mom said, "What I want is a happy kid, not a rich kid. That's what I root for." She saw how much joy I got from playing music, and those years were leaner than lean!

When you ask a songwriter, "What's your favorite song?" he goes, "The next one."

I'm the guy who loves being in the supporting cast.

Everything I've done feels like I'm just as much a part of it as if I was the producer. It's still the same job: all of us together figuring out the common good for a song. That's the only thing that matters. It's not like, "I'm the boss, and I'm gonna tell you what to play."

Through music you learn not to care about the color of someone's skin.

At the end of the day, all people want to do is hear a great singer sing a great song. They don't care about what vocal changes it went through. You can't screw up a great song and a great singer.

I'm a musician, so for the most part I've always thought that the musicians were equally as inspiring to listen to - maybe more so, in some cases - in addition to the artists.

I don't want to impress somebody, I want to move somebody. Say the most with the least.

The devaluation of music and what it's now deemed to be worth is laughable to me. My single costs 99 cents. That's what a single cost in 1960. On my phone, I can get an app for 99 cents that makes fart noises - the same price as the thing I create and speak to the world with. Some would say the fart app is more important. It's an awkward time. Creative brains are being sorely mistreated.

It's so much more interesting when you're human. I hate making mistakes, but I'm not afraid of 'em.

I don't chase what everyone else is looking for. Being creative is all about you.

I've always felt like every note of a song is of equal value.

I would love to hear someone write a song like 'He Stopped Loving Her Today' rather than 'You're hot. I'm hot. We're in a truck.' It's just mind-numbing to me.

Whether I'm making my own record, or playing a guitar part, I want what I do to have an impact.

Music is like having a conversation. All musicians inspire each other, and they're all geared to play something that matters.