I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.

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.

Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.

You can ask the people around me. I don't give up. I don't give up. I don't give - and it's not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don't give up. I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it.

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 worked there [on Pontiac] three weeks, got really sick of it, went back home and joined the Air Force.

My daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much to Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.