Musician

Human rights is something that wasn't hard to be inspired to write about because there have been so many violations of those rights.

Johnny Cash has always been larger than life.

I think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for - for its art.

'Sunday Morning Coming Down' is probably the most directly autobiographical thing I'd written. In those days, I was living in a slum tenement that was torn down afterwards, but it was $25 a month in a condemned building, and 'Sunday Morning Coming Down' was more or less looking around me and writing about what I was doing.

I hope that I'll keep being creative until they throw dirt on me.

I ended up being friends with all my heroes. Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash - it was incredible.

Looking back, I'm surprised I had the nerve to do it, but I'm glad I did. Performing the songs and performing in film was just a part of my personality, just like football and boxing at one point in my life. I was able to lose myself in both of them, and that was a good feeling.

I feel like an old boxer. The brain's gone, but I can still move around.

What really makes me happy now is my home. I know that I have that to lose. But I don't see losing it. And I don't care if I never do another movie. And I don't care if I never get back on the road. I like to think that I'm gonna do that. But if I don't, I can live with that.

Havin' Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play.

My albums really are like scrapbooks to me.

I did co-write 'Moment of Forever' with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.

I can interpret my own work honestly. And performing by myself seems to focus the attention in the right places.

There was time in the first half of the '80s when what I was saying on the stage was controversial. A lot of things I was talking about - Nicaragua and American foreign policy.

I've had a life of all kinds of experiences - most of them good. And I've got eight kids and a wife that puts up with everything I do and keeps me out of trouble.

I've never really felt comfortable co-writing. I usually go at my own speed, you know.

I have no regrets. I feel very grateful for the life that I had - you know, family I live with; and I've been doing work that I love, ever since I came to Nashville.

To me, if you love it enough to devote your life to it, then you're doing the right thing.

I used to think that my songs were the best things that I would leave behind me. And I definitely think my kids are now. For starters, they're writing better songs than I was at their age.

I remember having a lot of Josh White albums. Johnny Cash. Elvis. I loved the Coasters.