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" 'Southern Accents,' I think that's one of my best, really. That would have been 1984, and I wrote that on the piano in the studio at home. I had a studio, and I just happened to be down there in the middle of the night. It was quite late, probably early morning, and I just started to play, and a song just started to appear. "

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" I don't eat fish and chicken and all that. But I will have some eggs. So I'm not technically a vegan. But I eat pretty sensibly, and before a tour, I will usually work out a lot. I'll get a trainer, or I have a guy I've known a long time. "

Tom Petty

Eat

Work

Time

" I could come home, and I would spend the rest of the night just lying on the floor or the sofa listening to albums. It was like a movie to me. I still do, really, and doing the radio show ensures that I'll be sitting there listening. "

Tom Petty

Home

Doing

" If you're not getting older, you're dead. "

" I feel sorry for kids these days. They get so much homework. Remember the days when we put a belt around our two books and carried them home? Now they're dragging a suitcase. They have school all day, then homework from six until eleven. There's no time left to be creative. "

" I've been more and more into production lately, and I really, really love that. I love recording. "

Tom Petty

Been

Love

" Go after what you really love and find a way to make that work for you, and then you'll be a happy person. "

" My family wasn't involved in the college. They were more of just your 'white trash' kind of family. And so I have that kind of background, but I always kind of aspired to be something else, and I made a lot of different friends over the years that were passing through. "

" The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn't that bad! The writing came natural to me. "

" Most things I worry about never happen anyway. "

" Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs. "

" I've never had any idea that what I like would resonate with the audience, and I'm pleasantly surprised when it does. "

Tom Petty

Audience

Idea

" There's nothing like that feeling of having just written a song that you know is 'the song,' and you know it's really great, and you can't wait to share it with people; you can't wait to record it. "

" The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit. "

" I would never put my songs in a commercial. "

" When my record company rejected 'Full Moon Fever', I was hurt so bad. I was pretty far along in my career at that point. I'd never had anything rejected; I'd never really even had a comment. So when that happened, it was really just a board to the forehead. But then, finally, I picked myself up. "

" I don't know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I'm at during a particular moment in time. "

Tom Petty

Moment

Know

" The energy of the crowd is insane. Twenty thousand people. It's the biggest jolt of adrenaline. It's very hard to explain. You know the old story about the woman lifting the car off her kid? It's in that realm. You can actually hurt yourself and not know it. "

" I love doing my 'Buried Treasure' show. "

" I tend to write on an acoustic guitar or the piano. I have kind of a rule: if I can't sit down and play this and get the song over, I don't take it to the band, because most any good song, you can sit down and deliver it with a piano or a guitar. "

" The great thing about the Wilburys was that none of us had to take the heat by ourselves. I was just a member of the band. Nobody felt like he was above anybody else. We had such a good time. "

" I think that if people realize that with an mp3, you're only getting five percent of the sound that's there. But when you hear the entire thing... I think it would save the music business. It's such a drastic change. "

" When you get on the back side of your 60s, most people aren't working. "

" When I decided to be a musician I reckoned that that was going to be the way of less profit, less money. I was sort of giving up the idea of making a lot of money. It was what I loved to do. I would have done it anyway. If I'd had to work at Taco Bell I'd have still been out at night trying to play music. "

" When I go to see people, I always kind of hope they are going to play some kind of songs I know. So you've got to know your audience. It's kind of something that is a blessing and a curse in a way. You're obligated to play some of that stuff that people know, but I don't think that's all you have to do. "

" I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality. "

" The radio has so many rules, and songs don't. You don't necessarily write to a rule book unless you're, like, just doing it professionally, which has never been my thing. "

" I didn't think you could just become a rock and roll singer. "

" There used to be this real sense of community integrity in rock. It has really eroded. Everyone seems to be on their own now. "

" You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don't take life for granted any more. I'm really glad to be here. "

" When I was a kid, we didn't have any blues stations. I never heard Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or any of those people until the Stones had come along, and I took it upon myself to find out who these people were that they were covering. "