As far as fame, the everlasting fame thing. I used to think that was important for a writer... the desire to make your mark.
Every album I've made is about what I'm experiencing at the time.
Songs are just like your kids. You love them all, and they're all different. I can't really pick out favourites.
There was a film that really affected me, 'La Strada' by Fellini, where Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina travel around on his little motorcycle thing.
Right after I resigned from the Army in 1965, I flew helicopters for oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. I flew personnel from rig to rig, and I'd live on a platform out at sea.
Looking back, I'm surprised I had the nerve to do it, but I'm glad I did. Performing the songs and performing in film was just a part of my personality, just like football and boxing at one point in my life. I was able to lose myself in both of them, and that was a good feeling.
When I wrote 'Help Me Make It Through the Night,' I was on an oil platform out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and was just thinking of myself.
Look at me! I can go from 'Donny and Marie' to Sam Peckinpah to Radio City Music Hall in one week.
I turned 30 as a janitor. I was thinking at the time that Hank Williams died when he was 29. All my peers were at least 10 years younger than I was. I felt like an old has-been at the time.
I can interpret my own work honestly. And performing by myself seems to focus the attention in the right places.
There are a lot of Iraqi people we can never pay back for what we've done.
Johnny Cash has always been larger than life.
If it hadn't been for Johnny Cash, I'd probably have been a Nashville songwriter because that's what I had done for almost five years.
When I was stationed in Germany, Johnny Cash was already a legend over there because he'd done some shows, then gone off to some bar straight afterwards and played just for the troops. So he was a real hero.
I ended up being friends with all my heroes. Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash - it was incredible.
I enjoy looking back on my life. I'm thinking seriously about starting to write about it.
I feel like I'm kind of lazy, but I keep the yard looking good.
I feel like sometimes, when I'm singing a song like 'Moment of Forever,' that it goes both to your significant other and to the audience, and was it wonderful for you, you know? I think the best love songs I've written work on that level, like 'Help Me Make It Through the Night.'
Just the words and melody - that's what moves your emotions.
I have no regrets. I feel very grateful for the life that I had - you know, family I live with; and I've been doing work that I love, ever since I came to Nashville.
