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" 'Crumbling' Down' is a very political song that I wrote with my childhood friend George Green. Reagan was president - he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor. "

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" '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

Cool

American

Thought

" When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions. "

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

" I've seen beautiful art on the sides of buildings. I've seen beautiful art in museums. I've seen beautiful art in galleries. Beautiful art is everywhere. "

" 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. "

" My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material. "

" Broadway is a very different kind of place. It's kind of like Nashville in that there's a certain amount of people that are involved, and those people are what run it. "

" I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him. "

" I would never say John Kerry would be a great president. I will say that George Bush has divided us; he has filled this country with hatred. "

John Mellencamp

Great

Divided

" 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. "

" I've been around so many people for so long that I take great delight in my own company. "

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

" I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines. "

" 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. "

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

" If you hide information from people, don't want people to see the Ten Commandments or don't want people to hear about Darwin, aren't we hiding things that we know from our future generations? I just think that that's incorrect. "

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

" When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally. "

" Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, 'Okay, here's another great record by Bob Dylan; here's another great record by Led Zeppelin.' "

" As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine. "

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

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

" I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs. "

" I'm your average Joe guy. I don't really care for politicians. "

" This cycle of make a record, tour has been going on for 20 years now. I don't even know why I do it sometimes. Do I need more money? Do I need more platinum and gold records? The only thing I can think of is ego. "

" My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And she'd come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious. "

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

" I'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain? "

" Take 'Jack and Diane.' I was so disgusted with people thinking the line 'Hold on to sixteen as long as you can' meant to stay a teenager forever. What I meant was keep doing whatever makes you feel alive. "

" 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. "