I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing in the world more soul-satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing.

Beneath the stains of time the feeling disappears, you are someone else I am still right here.

Rick Rubin said, well, I don't know that we will sell records. He said, I would like you to go with me and sit in my living room with a guitar and two microphones and just sing to your heart's content everything you ever wanted to record. I said, that sounds good to me. So I did that. And day after day, three weeks, I sang for him.

My mother was determined that I was going to leave the farm and do well in life. And she thought with the gift, I might be able to do that. So she took in washing. She got a washing machine in 1942 as soon as we got electricity and she took in washing. She washed the schoolteacher's clothes and anybody she could and sent me for singing lessons for $3 per lesson.

When I record somebody else's song, I have to make it my own or it doesn't feel right. I'll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn't know it!

I haven't been familiar with hard work. It was no problem for me. But first I hitchhiked to Pontiac, Mich. and got a job working in Fisher Body making those 1951 Pontiacs.

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