I`ve never been a passive political supporter. My grandmother, Betty Kleitz , god bless her soul, was from Tuskegee, Alabama, took parts in the civil rights movement and after that became of course like a lot of blacks in the South a staunch Democrat.
The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had never lived [...] their blood is on so many hands, that history will weep in the telling...and it is not new blood. It is old, so very old.
I have this friend who has a theory that lots of towns have energies. And, for instance, certain places in Alabama have bad ones because they were built on reservations or built on cemeteries or something. But Nashville has a really gravitational, magnetic pull.
When I go across the country, whether it's Albuquerque, New Mexico, whether it's Birmingham, Alabama or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there are always forces at play that I choose to relate to and extract inspiration from, and as long as they stay committed to the struggle against poverty, I find a role for myself.
What happened was I began to eventually lose everything because cocaine had such a hold on me. I wouldn't show up to do things I had been hired to do - whether it was film for a video or do an ad for a magazine or something. I'd be out partying with cocaine. Eventually, I began to lose everything. So, I left California and went back to Alabama in an attempt to try to get my life together - but geographical location didn't necessarily help me because the real problem was in me.
Me personally, I come from very, very humble beginnings - little, small town in Alabama, you know, staying at my granddaddy house. We really didn't have nothing.
Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing.
I talk different, I walk different, everything. I don't have one single bad memory [there]. Not one. It was my sanctuary. I hated school, wasn't good in school, and me and my dad butted heads about that. But nothing mattered when I went home to Alabama.
News footage came on the TV during dinner of bloody bodies coming back from battle in Vietnam, or the race riots in the South, people getting hosed in Selma, Alabama, or the Biafra war, where I got my name. In my household, it was explained and discussed with the children, as a way of educating us from when we first started grade school why racism and war were wrong, what this all really means.
I'll never forget where I came from, and that my home is forever Sweet Home Alabama!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I'm serious. I've got to get people to realize that the government is full of it. Republicans and Democrats want to argue over stuff that's not important, like gay marriage or the war in Iraq or illegal immigration... When I run - if I run - we're going to talk about real issues like improving our schools, cleaning up our neighborhoods of drugs and crime and making Alabama a better place for all people.
The music I wanted to get into when I went to California, was to, uh, get into, uh, pop, mostly. And the big band era was on at that time. I was doing the "Mona Lisa"s, the "Stardust"s, "Stars Fell On Alabama," all this kind of stuff. And that was my thing that I wanted.
Actually, when I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe. On the last trip, I stayed in Europe for one year with $1,000, working everywhere I could, doing everything. Those years shaped me a lot and taught me the value of exploring different things.
As a criminal you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
Plagiarism has been around far longer than the Internet. In fact, I had a poem published in 'Seventeen' magazine when I was 15 years old. About a year later I was informed that there was a girl who used that same poem to win a statewide poetry competition in Alabama. It took months for people to put together that this had happened.
The worst gig story I have is from a club in Alabama that I think is still up and running, so I won't name the name of the club. We got hired in there to play, and the owner was pretty annoying. He kept coming up to me during the show and asking me to play 'Purple Rain.'
It's ironic that the Bible belt is the killing belt - Texas, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and so forth, Georgia. Chief executioners.
When I was on 'All My Children,' we did a thing for 'Seventeen Magazine' where a girl won a date. I went to her prom with her in Alabama, and she was a sweetheart. I didn't move to Alabama and I didn't buy a farm there, but we still keep in touch.
The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.
I have stood on the line in Everett, Wash., where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes. I would challenge anybody to tell me that they've stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody building anything.
I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.
On his 916th game as coach at University of Alabama - I've been here so long that when I got here the Dead Sea wasn't even sick.
That's starting to depress me about UFOs. The fact that they cross galaxies...and always end up in places like Fyfe, Alabama.
I played at Georgia, I coached at Alabama. I know how to beat both of them.
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