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.
We’ll all be equal under the grass, and God’s got a heaven for country trash.
All music comes from God.
I’m thrilled to death with life.
I am not a Christian artist, I am an artist who is a Christian.
I’m very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.
God’s the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That’s solely in the hands of God.
Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.
As sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.
When God forgave me, I figured I’d better do it too.
For you I know I’d even try to turn the tide.
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.
I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
The beast in me Is caged by frail and fragile bars.
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.
When I was a baby, my mama told me son, always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns. But I shot a man in Reno.
My daddy left home when I was three and he didn’t leave much to Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
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.
I wear my crown of thorns on my liars chair, full of broken thoughts I cannot repair, beneath the stain of time the feelings disappears. What have I become, my sweetest of friends?
I expect my life to end pretty soon. You know, I’m 71 years old. I have great faith, though. I have unshakable faith.