I'd just gotten into Los Angeles from Texas, where I live, and the phone rang and it was the guy calling about the Willie Nelson video. I was totally excited about it.
History will remember Nelson Mandela as a champion for human dignity and freedom, for peace and reconciliation
This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.
Nelson Mandela once said "I can't help it if the ladies take note of me; I'm not going to protest. "
Unsurprisingly, Nelson Mandela had and still has many detractors.
You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it better than you ever could.
Willie Nelson, out there 200 days a year, calls his band family. And it is.
What made Nelson Mandela great, was precisely what made him human. We saw in him, what we seek in ourselves.
The world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us.
But it was great, we sit in the same dressing room where, like, Johnny Cash sat and Willie Nelson and all those guys. That was in itself something amazing - I was on the same space these guys stood on, ya know?
Whatever happened to chivalry? Does it only exist in 80's movies? I want John Cusack holding a boombox outside my window. I wanna ride off on a lawnmower with Patrick Dempsey. I want Jake from Sixteen Candles waiting outside the church for me. I want Judd Nelson thrusting his fist into the air because he knows he got me. Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life.
The same things that we hurray and support in other places, like people like Nelson Mandela, our prisoners were doing the same thing, and they were captured and convicted of the same things. And we should remember them and treat them like the heroes they are.
I learned so much about recording and about singing on records from Ken Nelson.
Ricky Nelson. . . I couldn't believe it when he died. He was a great rock star.
One thing we are sure of is there's no one like Nelson Mandela out there. That's too bad for us.
I believe that Willy Nelson is the hillbilly Dalai Lama.
Nelson Mandela can rot in prison until he dies or I die, whichever takes longer.
The danger of course is always is caricature. The biggest challenge was to sound like Nelson Mandela. Everything else is easy to do, walk like him. He has a few ticks and things I noticed that I picked up. I didn't have any agenda, as it were, in playing the role other than to bring it as close to reality as I possibly could.
My dad taught me to play the guitar. We grew up with country music. We had every Willie Nelson record (laughs). I was saved at a young age and had a great desire to follow God. I was really focused on that through my whole life, even as a kid and through high school.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
