After about three lessons [my] voice teacher said, "Don't take voice lessons. Do it your way. You're a song stylist. Always do it your way."

We [with Rick Rubin] would focus on the ones that we did like, that felt right and sounded right. And if I didn't like the performance on that song, I would keep trying it and do take after take until it felt comfortable with me and felt that it was coming out of me and my guitar and my voice as one, that it was right for my soul.

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.

When my wife died, I booked myself into the studio just to work, to occupy myself.

Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he won't answer any more. Not the whiskey drinking Indian, nor the Marine that went to war.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.

I did [picking cotton] from - until I was 18 years old, that is. Then I picked the guitar, and I've been picking it since.