Happy Birthday George Strait!

I like people who are loyal to me, and I like to be loyal, too.

You know, legends are people like Haggard and Jones and Wills and Sinatra. Those people are legends. I'm just a young buck out here trying to keep in that same circle with the rest of 'em.

I want to reach the point where people hear my name and immediately think of real country music.

I'm always looking for great songs, and not being much of a songwriter, I depend on great songwriters to send them to me. I go through tons of stuff, and sometimes you just find material that kind of fits and becomes something special.

I can only say thank you and thanks also to all of the great songwriters who wrote those wonderful songs that became number ones.

Country music is important to me, and I love it, but it's not my whole life.

I spend most of hunting season at the ranch. We all love to hunt whitetails, and we have a pretty good supply in South Texas. I also love to hunt elk in Arizona, mule deer in Utah, and I've been to Canada to hunt caribou.

I think 'Beyond the Blue Neon' is the best I've ever done.

I'm a country singer. I love all kinds of music, but country is where my loyalty lies. That's just me and what I do, and I'm not going to change it.

You've got to keep the stage world and your real world separated or you're headed for trouble.

I love to fish offshore for billfish, and have fished all over for them from the Bahamas, St. Thomas, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico to the Texas gulf. I haven't made it to Australia yet, but someday I'm going.

Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys are simply the best band that ever was.

Sinatra, in my opinion, is possibly the greatest male singer of all time.

You know, traditional country music is something that's going to be around forever.

I love the song 'El Rey.' And for years, I never knew what the song was totally about. It was something new for me. I'd never sung a song in Spanish before. Then I got the translation and saw what a really cool song it was.

I loved making Pure Country. It was a great learning experience for me, seeing another part of the entertainment industry.

I've been fortunate.

I've had great fans, and they've been so loyal over the years.

We work hard when we're in the studio, but then when we take our breaks, we walk outside and look around.

I used to do a lot of interviews in the early '80s, when my career started, but it came to a point when I decided I didn't want to talk anymore, and people kind of understood that and left me alone.

I just continue to look for different material, great material, as good as I can find, and try to go in there and do as good a job as I can do in making it a record. That's all you can expect. That's all that you can do.

I'd say three years ago we played in my hometown of San Antonio for 55,000 people at the Alamodome and walking out there with a crowd like that is just, you're excited, you're scared. There are just so many emotions going on. I still get nervous for things like that until after I sing about the first one or two songs, then I settle down.

I get asked sometimes 'What's the highlight of my career?' because I've been doing it for so long, and I always have a hard time coming up with something, because so many good things have happened.

I'm going to write, and after two years, when I've quit touring, if a special event comes up that I want to do, by all means I will do it, but as far as a structured tour goes, at the last date of 2014 goes, that will be it for touring.

I've just tried for all of these years to find the best records, the best songs that I could find that fit me, and I've had great people to work with all these years.