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

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.

We're all in this together if we're in it at all.

The beer and the wurst were wonderful, but I was dying to be back in the South, where the livin' was easy, where the fish were jumpin', where the cotton grew high.

My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You'll be singing for the world someday.

I Walk The Line was my third record.

I knew that when I left there at the age of 18, I wouldn't be back. And it was common knowledge among all the people there that when you graduate from high school here, you go to college or go get a job or something and do it on your own.