"The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow."

"I enjoy looking back on my life. I'm thinking seriously about starting to write about it."

"I hope that I'll keep being creative until they throw dirt on me."

"The great thing about Nashville back in the day was that the old guys hung out where the young guys were. The established writers like Harlan Howard and Jack Clement gave us encouragement and passed the guitar, you know? Chet Atkins let me sit in on his sessions. Everybody was good to us, and everybody loved the music."

"I never was one to go into an office and write. For one thing, I had a job. I was cleaning the ashtrays and setting up the studios at Columbia for a couple of years and working every other week down in the Gulf of Mexico flying helicopters. I didn't really get to just write songs for about five years."

"Those 'Idol' shows are kind of scary to me. They wanted me to be on one of those panels one time, and I said it's the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do. I would hate to have to discourage somebody."

"Human rights is something that wasn't hard to be inspired to write about because there have been so many violations of those rights."

"I am grateful every morning I wake up. I've a big family full of kids, who laugh all the time and love each other."

"Being in love with a lot of people is incompatible with a stable family life."

"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."

"There's a time where people were out holding posters in protest outside shows I was doing, and thankfully, we've moved past that. And a lot of country stations wouldn't play me. They were more conservative than I was."

"Johnny Cash's legacy, I think if it was one word, it would be 'integrity.' He was the original wild man and grew from that guy that was doing all the crazy things that you read that rock n' rollers do to being someone who was like the father of our country, you know. He was a guest at the White House. He was Billy Graham's friend."

"Johnny Cash's legacy, I think if it was one word, it would be 'integrity.' He was the original wild man and grew from that guy that was doing all the crazy things that you read that rock n' rollers do to being someone who was like the father of our country, you know. He was a guest at the White House. He was Billy Graham's friend."

"There was time in the first half of the '80s when what I was saying on the stage was controversial. A lot of things I was talking about - Nicaragua and American foreign policy."

"I gave everything I ever wrote to Johnny Cash. I think he said later in some interview that he would take them home and throw them in the lake with all the other demos. I'm sure he got a million of them."

"'Heaven's Gate' was based on a true story about the cattle people: the people who had the money turned on the settlers who were in the area. And it was mainly a defense of their behavior. And the cattlemen's association had just about declared war on these people who were poaching cattle, and because they were mainly immigrants."

"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."

"The most valuable thing to me seems to be time, and with time, I can be great. I have been... and I will be."

"I think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for - for its art."

"I used to think that my songs were the best things that I would leave behind me. And I definitely think my kids are now. For starters, they're writing better songs than I was at their age."

"It's much better being an older father. You don't have to go prove to the world and to yourself that you're who you want to be, for better or worse."

"When I go away to do a movie, I bring the blanket I've had since I was a little girl. It helps me sleep. I also always bring my laptop so I can E-mail friends. And I bring my dog, Beauty, wherever I can."

"When I have time off, my friends and I will go to Universal Studios, the movies, out to eat, and shopping. I'm happiest when I'm just hanging out with my friends... it really doesn't matter what we do."

"I never read comics as a kid. I guess I was lazy and watched cartoons instead."