Steve Young quotes:

I did admire the comments and the music of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. And that didn't fly too well in the Deep South. It was not quite redneck enough.

When you're an elite athlete, it's a very special moment in time and you don't want it to end.

I may yet move [from Nashville], and where would I move if not Texas or New Mexico? I couldn't afford a home in California. I need to travel out of there occasionally.

I grew up wanting a guitar, my family was very poor. When I was fourteen my mother bought me a Gibson ES 125 thin body. That was a bunch of money in those days - $125.00.

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

My goal--and this is kind of my own little secret--but when I get married, just to head out and finish football and, and, and be a missionary around the world. Places where Steve Young--not that it's big really that many places--but places where they have no idea about football.

I notice guys playing the piano playing a part up here and a part down there, and I wandered why couldn't I do that on the guitar?

The wins and losses are over for Rice, the football player, who leaves with 38 NFL records. He was the easiest guy in the world to throw the football to, ... You always knew where he was headed.

I have somewhat [Taylor's or Gallagher's guitars], but I like the power of the Martins.

Gibson ES 125 was a real instrument, this was in 1956. I started learning; I had a vision of a sound.

51 Martin [guitar] sounded pretty good as new guitar. Martin has several levels of guitars now, and this one is pretty good.

I always felt like hanging around the pocket was trouble, but the truth is, the great players take the beatings in the pocket and expose themselves -- and that is the real risk.

I didn't have the self-promotion instinct, and I just didn't care about it. I sort of had a "beat" attitude.

I heard the commercial guys on the radio, the country guys, and now, a lot of that looks real good compared to...

I like the idea of having an old Gibson [guitar], but I don't have one. The Gibson has a different quality, but it's almost like you need both.

I was a young folk singer, or wanted to be. I really wanted to be a New England folk singer, but they never would accept me. I was always hard to categorize, and people wouldn't know what to make of it.

Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that's the truth in people's minds.

In medieval times, artists had patrons that supported them and this is a similar thing, ... We're basically saying, 'Wouldn't you like to be a part of this'

Fundamentally, if the league is going to have a no-tolerance policy for domestic abuse, if we're going to be a global organization that's going to have this as a perspective, we've got to back it up. We can't be backed into it with a video with more coming out. We've got to take an affirmative stance about it.

A running quarterback, to me, is safer. Because, once I got out [of the pocket], I didn?t run where there were a lot of people. I ran where there was nobody.

All I cared about was the music, like hearing Townes [ Van Zandt] talking about "For the sake of the song"; it's all that mattered. In spite of me a couple of things happened, mainly the Eagles and Seven Bridges Road. That certainly helped me survive. Joan Baez, Rita Coolidge, and Ian Matthews did it.

Brett Favre plays for championships. That's the only reason he puts up with all of this stuff. He's going to start to figure out, if it's true, that the Packers are not going to be competing for championships. The moment that comes into his heart - oh my gosh, the Packers are not going to be able to make it - that's the day he retires. It won't take much once he realizes that's where the Packers are going.

First of all, I wish everyone who loved football could stand in the quarterback's shoes just for a play, because I think it would be tremendously humbling to anyone who loved the game to say, "I didn't -- I had no idea." You can think about what it would be like, and the cameras are getting better at giving that perspective, that one that the skycam comes down and you get a sense of it, but you just -- you don't know.

I always had a hard time with Nashville. I reluctantly live there. I've mellowed, and it's improved some, in the fact it has more immigrants. There's some real Mexicans there, some folks from India, some of this and that. I'm not satisfied at all with living there. It's a dilemma for me.

I give NFL quarterbacks a lot of leeway for a couple of years,

I had a guy who went out of way to help me get started and somehow saw something in me. I couldn't get my hands on a real guitar till I was fourteen. I always wanted one from the time I was a tiny kid. Music was bigger than life to me.

I had admired Waylon [ Jennings], but I never expected to meet him and get to know him. When I finally moved to Nashville years later, one night I went to a Harlan Howard Guitar Pull thing, and there was Waylon. He started talking about how much he loved my work and how great I was, and I couldn't even get a word in.

I heard black people sing and the emotion was overwhelming to me. The power of that with all the built in sorrow and joy was just overwhelming to me as a little kid. It was the real deal.

I really wanted a guitar. As A little boy I used to tell people I was going to be a musician. They would humor me, and I'd make up thirty minute songs and drive them nuts.

I saw all that [white trash] growing up in Alabama and Georgia. I had a group of country cousins and we'd go visit them when I was a kid. They lived on a red dirt Georgia back road, in a shack, with twelve kids. Farmers. No electricity, they had a well on their back porch, but they had nothing, yet they were the happiest, freest people I'd ever met. I loved to visit them. Great sense of humor, and they kept up with all the latest music, country, rockabilly, that stuff. Great food they grew in the fields and canned. Happy people.

I was always drawn to the roots music, bluegrass, blues, early rock - Sun Records, Elvis [Presley]. And I still love that music to this day. Memphis never gets the credit. It's much more musically rich than Nashville ever will be. Nashville manufactured that hokey-hillbilly image way back.

I was born and grew up in the Deep South, and I must say it wasn't easy for me. I always marched to a drummer, I had different views about politics and religion and I had them relatively young.

I was known to spout off about [ politics and religion] sometimes, especially in my drinkin' days! It was pretty dangerous actually.

I was made to go to church and I heard the gospel songs, and every now then somebody would come through with a guitar and that was a thrill!

I was such a heavy drinker I was going to die at age 37. Not to mention the drugs. I'm glad to be sober, I haven't missed a thing. A lot of people never get the chance to come back.

I will be a missionary in a remote village at some point.

I'd rather work with guys that have time to live with you, and let it gel.

If I was an actor, it would be like a part that was me. It has to be real to me. I have to make it mine. I really enjoy taking a song I feel that way about, and sometimes it can take a long time to come up with just the right touch. I think that's really my greatest talent, interpreting.

If I wasn't so lazy, or if I had a roadie, I'd have a line of guitars on stage. I'd have a lap steel and a nylon string up there, but who wants to keep up with all that?

I'm playing a D-28 Martin that I've had about 20 years or so. I've got a '51 Martin and I thought I shouldn't be taking this on the road. So I went down to Gruhn Guitars in Nashville and kind of traded around and ended up with this one. This guitar sounded pretty good as new guitar.

I've refined it since [ was living in Beaumont, Texas], but I was just obsessed with the guitar. I remember one day sitting in class and it just came to me how the neck worked. I was enlightened to the scales, and the runs. I just saw it and thought; now I understand it!

James Burton was playing some pure roots stuff. Gram Parsons took an interest in that record [in '68-'69] and he admired it. I never had the concept that I'm going to go somewhere and I'm going to have this career. I just really never thought about all that.

Josh Graves laid down the dobro on that song [The White Trash Song] and he was hot. We went on the road together and we'd get drunker'n hell every night! I haven't had a drink since November, 1979. And I like it.

Music saved my life a few times because I could play the stuff rednecks loved. They thought I was great and they wondered why I didn't do that all the time.

My dad, like any coach, has always stressed the fundamentals. He taught me responsibility, accountability, and the importance of hard work.

My favorite record I've ever done is Rock Salt and Nails. It was recorded in '68-'69 and released in '69. There's something about that record I really like.

My playing style is very eccentric and mostly self taught.

No one can keep their word. Everyone's in hurry and jumping to the next opportunity. There's something missing...

One of the things that benefited me that anyone can learn is classical technique. That shows the orchestra that exists within the instrument.

The end is here, and you don't want be here. You are the best in the world at something, and you know you are not going to be that great at anything else.

The principle is competing against yourself.

The song [The White Trash Song] was not a put down of [ my country cousins ], but a celebration. I wrote that early on, as a teenager.

There are a lot of guys kind of on the bubble that can either be that sort who turn into journeyman kind of guys that will find a new spot or guys that can make a claim to be in one place for a long time. You can name a lot of names this year, an unusual number. And I think that most of them will be OK.

When was about 16 or 17, I was living in Beaumont, Texas and Carlos Montoya came to Lamar College. I went to see him and I didn't know what flamenco was. But when I saw him play, I was blown away that one man on one instrument could make all that sound. I'd learned a lot, but that made a big impact. I had intuition for it. In about three years I learned most of what I know now.

When you play quarterback in San Francisco, not much goes under the radar.