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.
He went up to heaven, located his dog. Not only that, but he rejoined his arm.
It’s all fleeting. As fame is fleeting, so are all the trappings of fame fleeting. The money, the clothes, the furniture.
So we raise her up every morning, we take her down every night, we don’t let her touch the ground and we fold her up right. On second thought, I do like to brag ’cause I’m mighty proud of the Ragged Old Flag.
I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere.
He was removed from jail and placed in a place for the insensitive and insane.
Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.
Could it be the girls and boys are trying to be heard above your noise?
Life is the question and life is the answer, and God is the reason and love is the way.
I wear black for those who never read or listen to the words that Jesus said, about the road to happiness, through love and charity.
I’ve been flushed from the bathroom of your heart.
Understand your man, meditate on it.
San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell.
Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he won’t answer any more. Not the whiskey drinking Indian, nor the Marine that went to war.
Stop your ears and close your eyes and try to find the face of love.
Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones. I can’t do a concert without singing a gospel song. It’s what I was raised on.
I just hope and pray I can die with my boots on.
Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.
I’m so uncomfortable wearing colors in public. I really am. Even denim. If I’ve got a day off in a town, I want to go out for a walk I’ll put on denim. But almost everything I’ve got the black on.
My mother always told me that any talent is a gift of God and I always believed it. If I quit, I would just live in front of the television and get fat and die pretty soon.
I think in my world of religion, you’re called to preach or you don’t preach. Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the gospel. I have a calling, it’s called to perform and sing.