I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

What I said, what are you [Rick Rubin] going to do with me that nobody else has been able to do to sell records with me?

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.

Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.

My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You'll be singing for the world someday.

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.

Life and love go on, let the music play.