Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.

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

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.

Sam [Phillips] wanted I Walk The Line up - you know, up-tempo. And I put paper in the strings of my guitar to get that (vocalizing) sound, and with the bass and the lead guitar, there it was. Bare and stark, that song was when it was released. And I heard it on the radio and I really didn't like it, and I called Sam Phillips and asked him please not to send out any more records of that song.

My arms are too short to box with God.

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.

They're powerful, those songs. At times they've been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.