"'Sunday Morning Coming Down' is probably the most directly autobiographical thing I'd written. In those days, I was living in a slum tenement that was torn down afterwards, but it was $25 a month in a condemned building, and 'Sunday Morning Coming Down' was more or less looking around me and writing about what I was doing."

"I've never really felt comfortable co-writing. I usually go at my own speed, you know."

"I did co-write 'Moment of Forever' with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words."

"'This Old Road' somehow seems to get better the older you get."

"I think it's kind of odd that 'This Old Road' was the first video I ever did. Because of all of the work I had done in films and everything, you'd think I would have done a video before that."

"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."

"To do the things that I did, I'm amazed that I had the audacity - like resigning from the Army and becoming a janitor and a songwriter."

"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."

"I have no neighbors. I live in a small town where everybody is very protective of me."

"My albums really are like scrapbooks to me."

"Every album I've made is about what I'm experiencing at the time."

"Bobby Bare is one of the greatest people in country music."

"My old man worked for Pan American."

"It's always embarrassing when somebody does something praiseworthy of you."

"The first movie I was ever on was a Dennis Hopper film down in Peru."

"Every time I turn on the radio, I must be on the wrong song or something. But, to be honest, since I went on the road back in 1970, I didn't listen to radio music because I didn't want to subconsciously steal somebody's stuff."

"They say the first thing to go is your legs, then it's your reflexes, then it's your friends."

"As far as fame, the everlasting fame thing. I used to think that was important for a writer... the desire to make your mark."

"If 'Bobby McGee' lasts, if 'Star Is Born' lasts, if 'Help Me Make It through the Night' lasts, if all of 'em last, man... who cares?"

"Look at me! I can go from 'Donny and Marie' to Sam Peckinpah to Radio City Music Hall in one week."

"I watched Dylan record 'Blonde On Blonde' in my first week at work at CBS. It was just incredible."

"I remember having a lot of Josh White albums. Johnny Cash. Elvis. I loved the Coasters."

"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 remember I had an actor friend - a close friend from college - Anthony Zerbe. He sent me a telegram before I started my first movie, 'Cisco Pike.' It said, 'Have a good time. Ignore the camera.' That was the extent of my training."