"Country" has become a marketing term. I see myself as a songwriter.

I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.

On the plane, an eight-year-old with an excess of testosterone keeps running across my feet. Finally I grab him by his T-shirt and say, very sweetly, 'Listen, darling, if you don't stop trampling me I'm going to make you sit on my lap while I tell you my entire life story. Including a lot of details about drug rehab and my divorce.' He goes back to his seat.

I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.

No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.

Being in Vietnam changed him [Johnny Cash] fundamentally. He was devastated when we went into Iraq.

I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.