You build on failure. You use it as a steppingstone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. Johnny Cash

“I knew I wanted to sing when I was a very small boy. When I was probably 4 years old. My mother played a guitar and I would sit with her and she would sing and I learned to sing along with her.”

“You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.”

“I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.”

“I’m very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.”

“That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.”

“My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don’t ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.”

“God gives us life and takes us away as He sees fit.”

“I learn from my mistakes. It’s a very painful way to learn, but without pain, the old saying is, there’s no gain.”

“That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.”

“You’ve got a song you’re singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you’ve got to make them think that you’re one of them sitting out there with them too. They’ve got to be able to relate to what you’re doing.”

“I took the easy way, and to an extent I regret that. Still, though, the way we did it was honest. We played it and sang it the way we felt it, and there’s a lot to be said for that.”

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”

“People call me wild. Not really though, I’m not. I guess I’ve never been normal, not what you call Establishment. I’m country.”

“If you aren’t gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.”

“I love to go to the studio and stay there 10 or 12 hours a day. I love it. What is it? I don’t know. It’s life.”

“It’s like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it’s off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think.”

“They’re powerful, those songs. At times they’ve been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.”

“The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I’ve got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.”

“When I record somebody else’s song, I have to make it my own or it doesn’t feel right. I’ll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn’t know it!”

“You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.”

“Life is rough so you gotta be tough.”

“I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they’re no good. I don’t throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.”

“Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.”

“If this were a movie I’d be the bad guy.”

“There’s a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there’s a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.”

“Beneath the stains of time the feeling disappears, you are someone else I am still right here.”

“There’s no more simple life with simple choices for the young.”

“However, neither he nor anyone else could have become the star Elvis was. Ain’t nobody like Elvis. Never was.”

“Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.”

“Somehow there’s been an immediate bonding between total strangers. We share each other’s triumphs, and when one of us gets hurt, we all bleed – it’s corny, I know, but it’s true.”

“We’re all in this together if we’re in it at all.”

“You miss a lot of opportunities by making mistakes, but that’s part of it: knowing that you’re not shut out forever, and that there’s a goal you still can reach.”

“The ones that you’re calling wild are going to be the leaders in a little while.”

“I’m not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I’m thrilled to death with life.”

“Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.”

“I love weather. I’m a connoisseur of weather. Wherever my travels take me, the first thing I do is turn on the weather channel and see what’s going on, what’s coming. I like to know about regional weather patterns, how storms are created in different altitudes, what kinds of clouds are forming or dissipating or blowing through, where the winds are coming from, where they’ve been. That’s not a passion everybody shares, I know, but I don’t believe there are any people on earth who, properly sheltered, don’t feel the peace inside a summer rain and the cleansing it brings, the renewal of the earth in its aftermath.”

“If you aren’t gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.”

“Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old, a friend when you’re lonely, or peace to your soul.”

“It’s good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people.”

“The battle against the dark one, and the clinging to the right one, is what my life is about.”

“A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat.”

“You can ask the people around me. I don’t give up. I don’t give up… and it’s not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don’t give up. I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I don’t believe in it.”

“It makes me so mad that some people underestimate the wisdom and energy of young people. All because they don’t look the way older folks think they should look. I’m working on a song about it. Maybe some of those closed minded people will realize long hair and tattoos don’t mean they should be ignored. Close minded people are part of what’s wrong with this world.”

“When I think about country music, I think about America.” –

“I love the freedoms we got in this country, I appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but I really appreciate my right to bear arms so I can shoot you if you try to burn mine.”

“This morning, with her, having coffee. [his description of paradise]”

“For you I know I’d even try to turn the tide.”

“Happiness is being at peace, being with loved ones, being comfortable…but most of all, it’s having those loved ones.”

“There’s unconditional love there. You hear that phrase a lot but it’s real with me and her [June Carter]. She loves me in spite of everything, in spite of myself. She has saved my life more than once. She’s always been there with her love, and it has certainly made me forget the pain for a long time, many times. When it gets dark and everybody’s gone home and the lights are turned off, it’s just me and her.”