Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform to.

When I was a baby, my mama told me son, always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns. But I shot a man in Reno.

We went down [Folsom Prison] and there's a rodeo at all these shows that the prisoners have there. And in between the rodeo things, they asked me to set up and do two or three songs. So that was what I did. I did "Folsom Prison Blues," which they thought was their song - you know? - and "I Walk The Line," "Hey Porter," "Cry, Cry, Cry." And then the word got around on the grapevine that Johnny Cash is all right and that you ought to see him.

Every week, Dennis Day sang an old Irish folk song. And next day in the fields, I'd be singing that song if I was working in the fields.

I would take songs that I'd loved as a child and redo them in my mind for the new voice I had, the low voice.

If you're going to be a Christian, you're going to change. You're going to lose some old friends, not because you want to, but because you need to.

In the Air Force, I had an old Wilcox Gay recorder, and I used to hear guitar runs on that recorder going (vocalizing) like the chords on "I Walk The Line." And I always wanted to write a love song using that theme, that tune.