Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

John Mellencamp

Related Quotes:

" If we have any hope for survival of the music that we all love, compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed, and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other's problems. "

John Mellencamp

" 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

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

John Mellencamp

" 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

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

John Mellencamp

" You cannot expect the guy who drove the car into the ditch to navigate it out of the ditch. You have to put a new driver in the seat. I'm not saying the new driver is going to be any better, but we need a new driver. Kerry is the only choice. "

John Mellencamp

" Life should never be viewed from the vantage point of achievements. It is total folly. "

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

" 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

" 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

" I just think if the song's good, sing it. I don't care who's doing it. I don't care if it's a country act. I don't care if it's a rock act. If the song's good, sing it. "

John Mellencamp

" This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it. "

John Mellencamp

" 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

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

John Mellencamp

" 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

" 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. "

John Mellencamp

" 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

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

John Mellencamp

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

" 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

" 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