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.

The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don't go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.

By the time I actually recorded Bitter Tears I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of those songs... I expected there to be trouble with that album, and there was.... when it was released, many radio stations wouldn't play it.... The very idea of unconventional or even original ideas ending up on "country" radio in the late 1990s is absurd.

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.

Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.

If you aren't gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.