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" All I'm doing is painting. It's my hobby. And that's that. "

John Mellencamp

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" Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song. "

John Mellencamp

" I think Roosevelt had four terms, didn't he? I think we should go back to that, and we should go back to four years for a senator, four years for a congressman, and I think we'd see a huge change in our society. "

John Mellencamp

" A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song. "

John Mellencamp

" What's the difference? One guy's the same as the other. "

John Mellencamp

" Hanging out is a waste of time. The only time I would hang out was when I was a kid, I would hang out in the streets. But once I started making records, I stopped hanging out. "

John Mellencamp

" American folk songs were about tragedy, right? They were about suffering and tragedy, and a lot of my songs are about that, even though they were misunderstood. "

John Mellencamp

" A lot of the time, I write in the third person, but I'm mostly describing my own ordeals. When those unsettled struggles prey on your mind, you become haunted. To get free, you must defeat your ghosts. "

John Mellencamp

" It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about. "

John Mellencamp

" Life should never be viewed from the vantage point of achievements. It is total folly. "

John Mellencamp

" When I wrote 'Pink Houses,' nobody was talking about that, right? The next thing I know, you can't see the TV without hearing commercials with 'Listen to the heartbeat of America,' or 'Born the American way.' That whole America thing now - I hate it. "

John Mellencamp

" I'm wide open and will entertain anything anybody has to say, but if it's MTV and radio, well, they're great things, but can't be the only thing. I don't know that it would work even for the Beatles. "

John Mellencamp

" Radio was my friend after 'Jack & Diane' and 'Hurts So Good.' "

John Mellencamp

" I don't want to be a politician. I don't like politics. It's petty; it fights dirty. "

John Mellencamp

" I went to New York in 1974, to either try to get a record deal, get into the New York Art Student League, or be a dancer. So that was my plan. Some plan. And I had no money. "

John Mellencamp

" When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy's hand. "

John Mellencamp

" When did Jimmy Stewart not play Jimmy Stewart? When did John Wayne not play John Wayne? But that's what we like about them. When you talk about acting, you really have to respond to somebody's personality. "

John Mellencamp

" I'm as left-wing as you can get. "

John Mellencamp

" I have to say when a man lives for himself, it's hard to live with him. That's pretty much the story of all my divorces. I've been making records since I was 22 and done things my way, and it's hard for me to compromise. And of course, to have a successful relationship, one has to compromise. Sometimes I'm not good at it. "

John Mellencamp

" If I'm painting, I paint every day. I'll be up in the studio from 8:00 in the morning to 8:00 at night. "

John Mellencamp

" We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at. "

John Mellencamp

" I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off. "

John Mellencamp

" My task with 'Uh-Huh' was to make a more even record and get away from juvenile topics like 'Hurts So Good.' But I also knew if I wanted to continue, I had to have more hits. "

John Mellencamp

" If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to. "

John Mellencamp

" I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is. "

John Mellencamp

" Wait a minute, guys, I have always been on your side. I have always spoken for you, always tried to put on a good face for the state of Indiana. All of a sudden, some of you people think I'm a bad guy? "

John Mellencamp

" 'Jack & Diane' was originally about race. I was playing nightclubs, and I was seeing new American couples, mixed-race couples. I thought it was cool. The song was my effort to make a song about that, but of course the record-company guy didn't like it. "

John Mellencamp

" I was born with Spina bifida. That's where you have a hole in your spine, and your nerve endings come out. "

John Mellencamp

" This is about black people selling out other black people. "

John Mellencamp

" My best songs come from a place outside myself. "

John Mellencamp

" What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is you fail. So what? I failed at a lot of things. My first record was horrible. "

John Mellencamp