I've always explored various areas of society. And I love the young people. And 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.

My arms are too short to box with God.

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.

I'm thankful for a pair of shoes that feel really good on my feet; I like my shoes. I'm thankful for the birds; I feel like they're singing just for me when I get up in the morning... Saying, 'Good morning, John. You made it, John.' I'm thankful for the sea breeze that feels so good right now, and the scent of jasmine when the sun starts going down. I'm thankful.

Well, I take great comfort in the words of the apostle Paul who said, ‘What I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do.’ And he said, ‘It is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me. But who,’ he asks, ‘will deliver me from this body of death?’ And he answers for himself and for me, ‘Through Jesus Christ the Lord.'

I kept talking to my producers at Columbia about recording one of those [prison] shows. So we went into Folsom on February 11, 1968, and recorded a show live.

It takes a real man to live for God-a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.