Quotes from Kristian Bush

Billy Pilgrim music is very emotional. It's one part the craft we learned from people like the Indigo Girls and R.E.M., and one part the Tom Waits craft, where you're trying to create a moment.

I love making music, but I also love making music that's on the radio. In some circles, that is considered less artistic. And I've always tried to resist those people that say the two can't exist at the same time.

You find your limits by going out and trying. We're just like anybody else in any other job. You just can't work 90 hour weeks. You can't do it. We can't sing seven days a week.

My kids don't listen to me when I preach at them. But if I tell them a story they can pull something from, that matters.

As soon as I saw tattoos as a way to tell your story, I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I totally get it.' So I got my first tattoo a couple of years ago, and it's the word 'hope' on my left arm. It has a couple of dots at the end for each of my kids.

There is a misconception that I've experienced in my life about people that live in the South. I got sent away to school in Connecticut in the late Eighties, and kids were honestly asking me, 'Do people there wear shoes?'

With Sugarland, it never felt like we were finished telling our story.

Each kind of generation of bands forgets how they got here. Waylon Jennings came out and they're like, 'That's not Patsy Cline.' And everyone panicked, like, 'I don't know what happened to country music, but this isn't it.'

I spent 25 years clearly understanding that I'm not gonna meet Bono or the Edge. But then it happened at the Grammys when we were all backstage and I just about fell out of my shoes.

When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, 'indie' wasn't a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as 'indie bands,' and then it became a genre.

The first time I toured the U.K. was in the early '90s with Billy Pilgrim, so I know how much the people there love music.

My father was an officer in the Army, and my grandfather served in World War II, and I am so proud of their service. I'll always do whatever I can to support our troops.

The most inspiring thing as an artist is when someone says, 'I believe in you'; sometimes that works even better than Grammys.

I don't remember consciously not being able to play an instrument. It's been kind of like a language for me.

I believe the biggest challenge is just getting the courage to try something different or new. Try to forget the stereotype in your mind. Yoga is for everyone - children, athletes, moms, dads, accountants, truck drivers, even country stars.

I have always heard that uber-successful people who write books about how to become uber-successful all have one thing in common: They all meditate every day. I consider yoga my meditation.

It's a great place to be as an artist: if you confuse your label, you're doing your job.

There's an identity thing that goes on where you spend so much time caring for your child that, after a year or so, you have to shake it off and go, 'Who am I?'

I try to spend a lot of time thinking of what it is I want to say, and how I want to say it. Mainly because I know what it's like as a fan to hear music that is just exactly what I needed.

Sugarland was a band we started to try to make things better. It was in the aftermath of 9-11; it was in the aftermath of my mother dying... there was a lot of weird stuff that had gone on that made you want to start something good.

It's hard not to go back and look at my songwriting catalog and go, 'Look, there are 600 to 700 songs here.'

I've tried to start my kids on 'Doctor Who,' but they're just not there yet. Someone had given me these TARDIS stick-em notes, so I gave them to Tucker, and he finally put them all over his locker. I'm like, 'You're the coolest fifth grader, ever!'

I get intimidated by famous people. When I'm around them and they look at me like I belong, I'm like, 'Are you nuts? You're freakin' famous!' Whether it's Elmo or a Beatle or Vince Gill, it's humbling to be in a room with these folks.

You will do things in private and sing in private and make choices in private that you wouldn't make if you were observed.