When I'm writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.

My sense of humor has saved me more than a couple of times in my life.

If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that's pretty good.

I sound like that old guy down the street that doesn't chase you out of his apple tree.

I think I've finally, after 72 years, gotten used to my voice, and it sounds like a friend now instead of an enemy.

I feel basically good about my career because it's remained constant. What I do has never been especially in vogue or gotten high on the charts. At the same time, I haven't had to stop performing any of my music because it aged in style.

Because of my song 'Sam Stone,' a lot of people thought I was interested in writing protest songs. Writing protest songs always struck me as patting yourself on the back.

I used to read a lot of Steinbeck, and I admired Roger Miller and Bob Dylan.

People keep inventing all these new machines, and producers and recording engineers keep wanting to use them.

The more producers I talked to, the more I got looked at like I was crazy for wanting to make a live-sounding album.

In high school, I was a poor student.

'Sam Stone' is a song about futility.

I did three club tours before I started playing concert halls, and the clubs were half full the first time around.

I take my own syrup, ketchup, and mustard, just in case of emergencies, in my suitcase. Whatever I can steal from the hotels. It's usually Heinz ketchup, and they give you a weird mustard. You don't get French's or anything; you get some sort of Dijon or some mustard. That's just for hot dogs. I don't use mustard for anything else.

When I was a boy, my family used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy.

I don't like to be caught without a pick.

I hate to admit it to my wife, but I only wear two outfits on the road, and then a third one during the day, but I carry about 20.

I was kind of thrown into - I didn't expect to do this for a living, being a recording artist. I was just playing music for the fun of it and writing songs. That was kind of my escape, you know, from the humdrum of the world.

I became a recording artist before I knew it. And I just - when I would listen to my old records, I'd just hear this young, extremely nervous fella that that made me want to run out of the room, you know, rather than listen to what he had to say.

If somebody tells me to work or exercise, I go the other way. I'll come up with an excuse.

Yeah, early '71 is when I got my record contract. I had a record come out by August of '71. Things happened really fast.

I thought I was grounded. I thought from my kinda blue-collar outlook on life that I would call myself a grounded person. I was not. I was like a balloon flying around in the air. And as soon as our first child was born, boom - my feet came right down to the ground.

The only reason I figured out I didn't like my old records to listen was I could hear how nervous I was and how uncomfortable I was. And who would want to sit around and listen to yourself being uncomfortable?

The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in.

Never wear your necktie while you're operating a lathe.

When you're singing somebody else's songs, it's just pure joy to me.

After a couple bouts with cancer and everything, black cats are nothin', you know?

I'd rather get a hot dog or a doughnut than write a song.

My first Grammy nomination? I was 24 - I was nominated for best new artist of the year.

To tell you the truth, the nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame totally surprised me. I had no idea that was coming. I know a lot of people like to say it's enough just to be nominated. But I've been nominated for so many things, I'd like to get this one. I think it's a long shot, considering I never had a No. 1 rock n' roll record.

People thought we were crazy for starting a record company. They really thought I was shooting myself in the foot.

'The Ways of a Woman in Love' is one of my very favorite early Johnny Cash songs. I like the way the lyric talks about the character walking by the girl's house and wishing he was the one in her arms.

The only time I ever think about getting old is when I look in the mirror. I feel pretty good about it, actually.

My music has been called so many different things over the years. I figure as long as it's selling, call it what you want.

Soon as I could play one guitar chord and laid my ear upon that wood, I was gone. My soul was sold. Music was everything from then on.

You know that first love that leaves you? You never forget that, especially if you're a songwriter. I must have gotten nine songs out of that girl.

I was a mailman walking in the snow six days a week, 12-hour days. Every two weeks, I'd get a check for $228.

Kris Kristofferson and Steve Goodman were the two most unselfish people I ever met.

I could never teach a class on songwriting. I'd tell them to goof off and find a good hideout.

As far as guitar picking, if I make the same mistakes at the same time every day, people will start calling it a style.

I always feel like every song is the last song.

I grew up in Chicago, but I spent a lot of time down in Kentucky, and Kentucky was about 20 years behind the life that was in Chicago.

I try to write about things that actually happened so that I know it's real before I put it down on paper.

I was in the Army in the 1960s. I didn't go to Vietnam. I went to Germany, where I drank beer. But I did have an empathy with the soldiers in Vietnam.

I didn't hear anybody talking about the plight of a soldier coming back home and what he'd gone through. That was why I wrote about that stuff. If somebody else had done it, I probably wouldn't have touched the subject.

In my songs, I try to look through someone else's eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.

I'll go to the movies and hear 'Angel From Montgomery' in some film, and nobody ever even told me about it. They don't tell you your stuff is going to be in a movie. They don't have to, so they don't tell you. You get paid eventually.

Writing songs used to be my hobby; it used to be my getaway.

I can blame a lot of things for not writing songs, but cancer isn't one of them.

If you listen to people talk, when people actually talk, they talk in melodies. If they get angry, their voice rises, and it's more of a staccato thing. When they ask for something, they're real sweet. It's all music.