Having hits buries a singer in the past. A lot of singers hide in the past because it's safer back there. If you've ever heard today's country music, you'll know what I'm talking about.

The Duke [John Wayne] was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn't seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun, and it's been the ruin of many a poor boy and God I know I'm one.

I don't need your organization, I've moved your mountains and I've marked you cards, but Eden is burning. You better get ready for elimination or else your hearts must have the courage of the changing of the guard.

The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots.

When the jelly faced women all sneeze, hear the one with the mustache say I can't find my knees.

[In 1951] we were also told that the Russians could be parachuting from planes over our town at any time. These were the same Russians that my uncles had fought alongside only a few years earlier. Now they had become monsters who were coming to slit our throats and incinerate us. It seemed peculiar. Living under a cloud of fear like this robs a child of his spirit. It's one thing to be afraid when someone's holding a shotgun on you, but it's another thing to be afraid of something that's just not quite real.