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

More and more, I see myself as a folk musician, and someone who values context.

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities.

When my dad died a lot of songs came, and they're still coming.

It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who see to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.

Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.

I was a songwriter; that was the torch I carried. This is an honorable profession. This is what I do.