Because you're mine, I walk the line.

Sam Phillips always encouraged me to do it my way, to use whatever other influences I wanted, but never to copy...if there hadn't been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field.

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.

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.

Sam [Phillips] wanted I Walk The Line up - you know, up-tempo. And I put paper in the strings of my guitar to get that (vocalizing) sound, and with the bass and the lead guitar, there it was. Bare and stark, that song was when it was released. And I heard it on the radio and I really didn't like it, and I called Sam Phillips and asked him please not to send out any more records of that song.

Understand your man, meditate on it.

We went down [Folsom Prison] and there's a rodeo at all these shows that the prisoners have there. And in between the rodeo things, they asked me to set up and do two or three songs. So that was what I did. I did "Folsom Prison Blues," which they thought was their song - you know? - and "I Walk The Line," "Hey Porter," "Cry, Cry, Cry." And then the word got around on the grapevine that Johnny Cash is all right and that you ought to see him.