I take my own syrup, ketchup, and mustard, just in case of emergencies, in my suitcase. Whatever I can steal from the hotels. It's usually Heinz ketchup, and they give you a weird mustard. You don't get French's or anything; you get some sort of Dijon or some mustard. That's just for hot dogs. I don't use mustard for anything else.
People keep inventing all these new machines, and producers and recording engineers keep wanting to use them.
I have to have something that really excites me in order to write about it.
I became a recording artist before I knew it. And I just - when I would listen to my old records, I'd just hear this young, extremely nervous fella that that made me want to run out of the room, you know, rather than listen to what he had to say.
You know that first love that leaves you? You never forget that, especially if you're a songwriter. I must have gotten nine songs out of that girl.
'Sam Stone' is a song about futility.
The only time I ever think about getting old is when I look in the mirror. I feel pretty good about it, actually.
One time, I went to school, and they asked us all to find out where our roots were. It's goin' around the class, and the kids were going, 'I'm Swedish-German' or 'I'm English-Irish.' They got to me and I said, 'Pure Kentuckian.'
Kris Kristofferson and Steve Goodman were the two most unselfish people I ever met.
I could never teach a class on songwriting. I'd tell them to goof off and find a good hideout.
My first Grammy nomination? I was 24 - I was nominated for best new artist of the year.
The Songwriters Hall of fame, that's the one all the big-time writers get into, the really great stuff, the Broadway stuff and all that. That would be something, to get your name in there.
I think if you write from your own gut, you'll come up with something interesting, whereas if you sit around guessing what people want, you end up with the kind of same schlock that everybody else has got.
I did three club tours before I started playing concert halls, and the clubs were half full the first time around.
When I was a boy, my family used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy.
I still enjoy the heck out of getting up there to play shows every night.
I was kind of thrown into - I didn't expect to do this for a living, being a recording artist. I was just playing music for the fun of it and writing songs. That was kind of my escape, you know, from the humdrum of the world.
When I'm writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.
Ignorance is bliss as a writer, I think.
'The Ways of a Woman in Love' is one of my very favorite early Johnny Cash songs. I like the way the lyric talks about the character walking by the girl's house and wishing he was the one in her arms.
