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" 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? "
John Mellencamp
Who
Guy
Authority
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" I need a long and lingering death to make sure that I have time to have a deathbed conversion. "
John Mellencamp
Sure
Time
Need
" Everything I have is for sale. Material items are just things that pass through your hands that mean very little or nothing. "
John Mellencamp
Everything
Hands
Nothing
" As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine. "
John Mellencamp
Matured
Songwriter
Realize
" When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy's hand. "
John Mellencamp
Fear
Enemy
Playing
" 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
Young
Age
Business
" There are a lot of actors who try to get records made and try to make record deals, and everybody goes, 'Ugh.' It used to be expected in the entertainment business. I mean look at Sinatra, Bing Crosby. All these guys started out as singers. "
John Mellencamp
Entertainment
Look
Mean
" People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four. "
John Mellencamp
Indiana
Me
Years
" 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
Personality
Talk
Play
" 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
Think
Society
See
" I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded. "
John Mellencamp
Keep
Grandmother
Me
" 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
Song
Songs
Other
" 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
Going
Fans
Because
" 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
Great Things
Work
Great
" 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
Day
Night
Morning
" A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness. "
John Mellencamp
Painting
Even
Beautiful
" 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
Mind
Funny
Writing
" 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. "
John Mellencamp
Nashville
Place
Run
" 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
" When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally. "
John Mellencamp
You
Live
Thinking
" As I get older, I have a different look on life. I just try to be a little more tolerant and a little bit more centered about what's going on around me and not so emotional. "
John Mellencamp
Try
Life
Emotional
" Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll. "
John Mellencamp
You
Kid
Music
" 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. "
John Mellencamp
Greed
Expectation
Sales
" I wanted to study at the Art Students League in New York when I was young, but I didn't have the money. Then I was fortunate enough to become Johnny Cougar Mellencamp. At the time, I thought I'd make a couple of records and get back to painting. It never dawned on me that I'd be 64 years old and still making music. "
John Mellencamp
Money
Art
Time
" 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
Time
Sunday
She
" 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
Always
Song
Life
" 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
Know
Good
Beautiful
" 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
Art
Seen
Beautiful
" I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off. "
John Mellencamp
Voice
Depth
Off
" I used to think that eating healthy was ordering a fish sandwich at McDonalds. "
John Mellencamp
Think
Fish
Healthy
" Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album. "
John Mellencamp
Two
First
He