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" If I laugh a couple of times a day, I'm doing good. People think it's their God-given right to be happy, and it's just not. It's something you've got to work at. I like to paint the human condition, and the human condition is not smiles and happy people. "

John Mellencamp

Day

Good

Happy

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" Do I think it's OK to fight authority as long as you're only talking about the high school teacher? No. "

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

" '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. "

" People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four. "

John Mellencamp

Indiana

Years

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

" 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. "

" For me to pretend I'm the keeper of the small town mentality or that's all I'm interested in is wrong. "

John Mellencamp

Small

Pretend

" I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it. "

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

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

" The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased. "

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

" 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. "

" I used to think that eating healthy was ordering a fish sandwich at McDonalds. "

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

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

" 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 want my paintings to look like they were found in a garage. If they get a scratch or a hole in them, it just becomes part of the painting. "

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

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

John Mellencamp

Keep

Grandmother

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "