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

John Mellencamp

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" 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. "

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" It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news. "

John Mellencamp

Singer-Songwriter

" One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended. "

John Mellencamp

" 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. "

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

" We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing. "

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

" 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. "

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

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

John Mellencamp

" People have the right to say what they want to. "

John Mellencamp

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

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

" A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness. "

John Mellencamp

" In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that. "

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

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

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

" I need a long and lingering death to make sure that I have time to have a deathbed conversion. "

John Mellencamp

" I've just been fortunate to havehad a lot of hit records, though Human Wheels doesn't qualify as a hit record-but it's really the best single I've ever had. "

John Mellencamp

" A lot of record company people, even though they're our age, want to be perceived as young hip guys, and they're hurting the business. "

John Mellencamp

" 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. "

John Mellencamp

" I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded. "

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

" Natalie from the Dixie Chicks could have said what she said before 9-11 and no one would have cared. "

John Mellencamp

" Unemployment is sky-rocketing; deflation is in our future for the first time since the Great Depression. I don't care whose fault it is, it's the truth. "

John Mellencamp

" 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

" I ended up writing songs and growing up in public with my songwriting. And it's a good thing for me back then: in the early '70s, there was a thing called artist development, where an artist could find his feet, find himself, find his voice. I think I made five or six albums before I sold five or six albums. "

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