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.

It's all fleeting. As fame is fleeting, so are all the trappings of fame fleeting. The money, the clothes, the furniture.

Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones. I can't do a concert without singing a gospel song. It's what I was raised on.

Those that have lived longer than us always have something to teach us, that we can take with us for the rest of our lives.

It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

He drank his first strong liquor then to calm his shaking hand, and tried to tell himself at last he had become a man.

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.