The hardest thing for me in Vietnam wasn't seeing the wounded and dead. It was watching the big transport jets come in, bringing loads of fresh new boys for the war.

My mother always told me that any talent is a gift of God and I always believed it. If I quit, I would just live in front of the television and get fat and die pretty soon.

That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.

Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform to.

Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.

Sam Phillips asked me to go write a love song, or maybe a bitter weeper. So I wrote a song called, "Cry Cry Cry," went back in and recorded that for the other side of the record.

In the Air Force, I had an old Wilcox Gay recorder, and I used to hear guitar runs on that recorder going (vocalizing) like the chords on "I Walk The Line." And I always wanted to write a love song using that theme, that tune.