Quotes from Chris Carmack

Music kept me sane between acting jobs.

I've found it really hard to finish writing songs when you're writing on not just your schedule but somebody else's.

I lived in a little shack in Santa Monica, and I was working on 'The O.C.' and when it started airing, I took my laundry down to the laundromat like I always had, and so many people along the two blocks I walked and in the laundromat stopped me and asked me for photographs.

I love how Hollywood still wants to perpetuate the myth that beaches in Southern California are warm at night.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I read in an interview with Lil Wayne that he recorded a mixtape of something like 50 straight minutes of him rapping all of his material because he felt like he could never move on to the next phase of his musical exploration if he didn't get it down on tape.

I grew up in a neighborhood that was surrounded by farms. There was a horse farm behind me and dairy farms on either side.

I think the 'Jaws' shark and the 'Shark Night' shark would fall in love and make sweet babies.

I have gotten better at saying to myself, 'Relax and just take this moment in. Appreciate it for what it is.'

I grew up playing the saxophone. I joined the jazz band in high school, but somewhere along the way I realized the guys who strummed acoustic guitars at parties were the ones who got the attention. So I asked a friend to show me a few chords, and when I moved to L.A. I spent a lot of time practicing my guitar.

I describe my years in Los Angeles as 12 years of culture shock.

I'm somebody who values anonymity - not just in terms of not wanting people to recognize me or wanting my privacy, but I value anonymity in conversation.

In terms of exploring an identity in the country music world, what I realized very quickly was that there are people who have been performing country music since they were kids. It's very much a part of who they are; very much that jazz and blues are a part of who I am, because I grew up listening to and playing that kind of music.

Success has a lot of different plateaus. But I first felt really proud of myself when I was doing an off-Broadway production in New York City.

I've often been described more than once in my life as very much like a golden retriever: just sort of happy and excited to do whatever it is, even if it's as simple as retrieving a ball and bringing it back ad nauseum.

There are a lot of opportunities to do a lot of great, wonderful things, and if you say yes to them all, you will not sleep or breathe or eat.

When I came to Nashville, I was sort of experimenting with a new identity, experimenting with the country world and country writers. I realized I needed to take a step back from that, to be true to some of the music I've been doing over the years and to put that into the world before I move forward and redefine myself again.

CNT was a good fit for 'Nashville,' and 'Nashville' was a great fit for CNT, and so timing was right. You know, they're investing more in scripted television - the show brought a lot of more eyeballs to CNT, eyeballs that are interested in country music - so, I mean, it couldn't have been a better fit.

I really do love the theater and as you get deeper into your career, it gets harder to carve out the time to do theater.

A career like mine as an actor has a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes you wonder if you're not wasting your time trying to carve out a space for yourself in this crazy entertainment industry.

Let's be honest - it's hard for me to get more sexy, but I'm giving it a go.

I have these songs that I've been playing for so many years. They're so intimate and close to me. And these are songs that probably a major label would not be interested in - some of them, anyway - interested in putting on a record.

I'm a fan of Otis Redding. I've sat around trying to copy some of his phrasing and learn from him, but it kinda falls short.

Being an assistant in a computer lab was the worst job I ever had. It was boring. That was when I was in college.

I'm honestly kind of scared of horror films. My girlfriend always tries to expose them to me. Being in a scary movie and seeing all the fake blood and stuff definitely takes away from the magic and kind of humanizes scary movies to me now, though.