Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.

We'll all be equal under the grass, and God's got a heaven for country trash.

The requests started coming in from other prisoners all over the United States. And then the word got around. So I always wanted to record that, you know, to record a show because of the reaction I got. It was far and above anything I had ever had in my life, the complete explosion of noise and reaction that they gave me with every song. So then I came back the next year and played the prison again, the New Year's Day show, came back again a third year and did the show.

The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I've got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

You know, the man's best friend is his dog... if he's got nothing else.

I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere.

Death and hell are never full, and neither are men's eyes.