I used to sing Bill Monroe songs. And I'd sing Dennis Day songs like songs that he sang on the Jack Benny show.

There's unconditional love there. You hear that phrase a lot but it's real with me and her [June Carter]. She loves me in spite of everything, in spite of myself. She has saved my life more than once. She's always been there with her love, and it has certainly made me forget the pain for a long time, many times. When it gets dark and everybody's gone home and the lights are turned off, it's just me and her.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

I had an empathy for prisoners and did concerts for them back when I thought that it would make a difference - you know? - that they really were there to be rehabilitated.

When I was a baby, my mama told me son, always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns. But I shot a man in Reno.

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.

If you're going to be a Christian, you're going to change. You're going to lose some old friends, not because you want to, but because you need to.