I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.

When I record somebody else's song, I have to make it my own or it doesn't feel right. I'll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn't know it!

Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.

That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.

It's like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it's off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think.

Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don't ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.

I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.

For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide.

God gives us life and takes us away as He sees fit.

God's the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That's solely in the hands of God.

I am not a Christian artist, I am an artist who is a Christian.

I knew I wanted to sing when I was a very small boy. When I was probably 4 years old. My mother played a guitar and I would sit with her and she would sing and I learned to sing along with her.

I love to go to the studio and stay there 10 or 12 hours a day. I love it. What is it? I don't know. It's life.

I read novels but I also read the Bible. And study it, you know? And the more I learn, the more excited I get.

I was wearing black clothes almost from the beginning. I feel comfortable in black. I felt like black looked good onstage, that it was attractive, so I started wearing it all the time.

I wear black because I'm comfortable in it. But then in the summertime when it's hot I'm comfortable in light blue.

I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.

Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.

People call me wild. Not really though, I'm not. I guess I've never been normal, not what you call Establishment. I'm country.

The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I've got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

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

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

All your life you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love positivity and gratitude that things arent worse or hate negativity and bitterness that things arent better ...I choose love positivity and gratitude that things arent worse.

All your life you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hateI choose love.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You dont try to forget the mistakes but you dont dwell on it. You dont let it have any of your energy or any of your time or any of your space.

The ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.

Don't let ambition get so far ahead that it loses sight of the job at hand.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Since love first made the breast an instrument Of fierce lamenting, by its flame my heart Was molten to a mirror, like a rose I pluck my breast apart, that I may hang This mirror in your sight.

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

While advances in scientific research have led to some new and exciting treatments that have enlarged and enhanced the quality and length of human life, we must not lose sight as to what we are trying to accomplish.

In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim - that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.

When you're special to a cat, you're special indeed, she brings to you the gift of her preference of you, the sight of you, the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand.

The few wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them.

Most countries are static, and they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.

For we walk in faith, not by sight.

It will be thought that I am acting strangely in concerning myself at this day with what appears at first sight and simply a well-known method of fortune-telling.

But, I would be naive not to recognize the number of musicians who tell me they have been influenced by me and sight me - as well as Alex and Neil - as a musician who has been a positive influence on their playing.

I believe in love at first sight. You want that connection, and then you want some problems.

Visions of glory, spare my aching sight.

The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it.

This is what I am. I have periods of enormous self-destructive depression, where I go completely off my trolley and lose all sight of reality and reason.

The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them.