Johnny Cash Quotes

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt. ~ Johnny Cash

I love Johnny Cash, and I respect Johnny Cash. He's the biggest. He's like an Elvis in this business, but no, he's never been the rebel. ~ Waylon Jennings

I love singing some Johnny Cash, which is interesting because it's in a guy's key; I love singing Elvis Presley. ~ Samantha Barks

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

I remember everything What have I become? My sweetest friend? E veryone I know goes away in the end You could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt. ~ Johnny Cash

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

They're powerful, those songs. At times they've been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home. ~ Johnny Cash

When I was arrested I was dressed in black ~ Johnny Cash

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. ~ Johnny Cash

When people ask me who my favorite country singer is, I say, 'You mean besides George Jones?' ~ Johnny Cash

I'm so uncomfortable wearing colors in public. I really am. Even denim. If I've got a day off in a town, I want to go out for a walk I'll put on denim. But almost everything I've got the black on. ~ Johnny Cash

I just hope and pray I can die with my boots on. ~ Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash had all of the same talents and problems as Elvis - a poor upbringing in the rural South exposure to gospel music throughout his childhood a penchant for drug abuse ... they had the same sort of influencing experiences but Johnny' Cash's problematic relationship was with his father not his mother. If he had had the mommy issues that Elvis had instead of a compelling need to prove himself to his father, he wouldn't have been the badass man in black, the guy in Folsom Prison watching the train roll by. Elvis was a lot of things but even with the karate and the gunplay he was more unstable than badass. ~ Molly Harper

I admit I'm a fool for you, because your mine, I walk the line. ~ Johnny Cash

So we raise her up every morning, we take her down every night, we don't let her touch the ground and we fold her up right. On second thought, I do like to brag 'cause I'm mighty proud of the Ragged Old Flag. ~ Johnny Cash

He drank his first strong liquor then to calm his shaking hand, and tried to tell himself at last he had become a man. ~ Johnny Cash

All music comes from God. ~ Johnny Cash

He [Johnny Cash] always wanted to use his music to lift other people up, to say no matter how much trouble, there's hope. That was always his message in his songs. That's why he and [Bob] Dylan bonded so much, because they were both trying to do something meaningful. ~ Robert Hilburn

I think in my world of religion, you're called to preach or you don't preach. Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the gospel. I have a calling, it's called to perform and sing. ~ Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash was the champion of the voiceless, the underdogs and the
downtrodden. He was also something of a holy terror, like Abraham Lincoln
with a wild side. He represented the best of America. ~ Kris Kristofferson

He was removed from jail and placed in a place for the insensitive and insane. ~ Johnny Cash

I love Johnny Cash but I don't love country music that much. ~ Ville Valo

Death and hell are never full, and neither are men's eyes. ~ Johnny Cash

Where better than the church for people like me, George Jones and Johnny Cash to go to get ourselves in shape enough to sing a gospel song? ~ Marty Stuart

I could enjoy the simple life with a small living quarters, a scratched album of Johnny Cash and a Box of Twinkies ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

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

Could it be the girls and boys are trying to be heard above your noise? ~ Johnny Cash

Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you're the one I need ~ Johnny Cash

I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing in the world more soul-satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing. ~ Johnny Cash

The smell of cigarette smoke in the air in a tavern that changes names often,
a bar cursed because of a girl who died of a drug overdose
in the basement, we put a few coins in the jukebox;
chose "Angel Band" by Johnny Cash and sat down at the bar,
ordered a soda, you wanted a whiskey on the rocks.
We saw the coal miner who moved here from West Virginia
knocking back liquor like I drink sweet tea.
No one asked why he was so solemn today.
It was warm. It was relatively quiet.
To anyone else, this place could feel sinister.
But to us, it was freedom. It was a hiding place.
No one was ever here long enough to know us.
And we liked it that way. ~ Taylor Rhodes

I'm not really concerned about boundaries. I just follow my conscience and my heart. Follow your heart. That's what I do. Compassion is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of compassion. ~ Johnny Cash

Convicts are the best audience I ever played for. ~ Johnny Cash

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. ~ Johnny Cash

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

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. ~ Johnny Cash

You will always be my June, Tru."
"And you're my Johnny Cash, Jake. ~ Samantha Towle

You're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. ~ Johnny Cash

Take one fresh and tender kiss
Add one stolen night of bliss
One girl, one boy, some grief,
some joy Memories are made of this. ~ Johnny Cash

Canadian Railroad Trilogy is an extremely fine piece of songwriting. ~ Johnny Cash

As sure as God made black and white, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light. ~ Johnny Cash

A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat. ~ Johnny Cash

Deep in the heart of the infinite darkness, a tiny blue marble is spinning through space. Born in the splendor of God's holy vision, and sliding away like a tear down his face. ~ Johnny Cash

You're nothing like your sister," he tells me. "She meant a lot to me, okay? It's true. But the things I like about you have nothing to do with her. You - you are so strong and stubborn it drives me crazy. You're the one going through all this and you still put Laney first every time, instead of throwing yourself the pity party we both know you deserve. You call me out on my shit, and I like that, because sometimes I need someone to call me out on my shit. And you get Johnny Cash, and you take these incredible photos, and everything about you makes me hurt, in a good way, and it blows my mind that someone can be so amazing and not even see it. ~ Hannah Harrington

I'm like Johnny Cash. I only wear black. ~ Adele

No matter how much you've sinned, no matter how much you've stumbled, no matter how much you fall, no matter how far you've got from God, don't give up. You can still be redeemed. As someone says, keep the faith. ~ Johnny Cash

God Ain't no stained glass window, cause he never keeps his window closed. ~ Johnny Cash

This morning, with her, having coffee ~ Johnny Cash

It's important to realize that everybody who went into country music, and most everybody who went into rock and roll in the '50s, they had no more goal than a hit on the jukebox. Johnny Cash from the very beginning had a goal that he wanted to make music that lifted people's spirits. ~ Robert Hilburn

I took the easy way, and to an extent I regret that. Still, though, the way we did it was honest. We played it and sang it the way we felt it, and there's a lot to be said for that. ~ Johnny Cash

I love most 70's song writers, not so much outlaw, but really those 70's guys. I'm a big fan of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, those guys. ~ Bryan Hayes

And they just saw me on that and - from the time I was 11 until I was 12, I guess. And then when I had just turned 13, they asked me if I wanted to tour with Johnny Cash back East. ~ Barbara Mandrell

My arms are too short to box with God. ~ Johnny Cash

There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left. ~ Johnny Cash

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.
I wear the black for those who never read ~ Johnny Cash

Throughout the '50s, tons of unknown locals came through Sun to record their demos. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis all made their first recordings at the former Memphis Recording Service. ~ Shawn Amos

Of travel I've had my share, man, I've been everywhere. ~ Johnny Cash

This business I'm in is different. It's special. The people around me feel like brothers and sisters. We hardly know each other, but we're that close; somehow there's been an immediate bonding between total strangers. We share each other's triumphs, and when one of us gets hurt, we all bleed - it's corny, I know, but it's true. I've never experienced anything like this before. It's great. It turns up the heat in life. ~ Johnny Cash

I wear my crown of thorns on my liars chair, full of broken thoughts I cannot repair, beneath the stain of time the feelings disappears. What have I become, my sweetest of friends? ~ Johnny Cash

James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together. ~ Vonda Shepard

I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart. ~ Johnny Cash

I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere. ~ Johnny Cash

But it was great, we sit in the same dressing room where, like, Johnny Cash sat and Willie Nelson and all those guys. That was in itself something amazing - I was on the same space these guys stood on, ya know? ~ Alan Vega

There's a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there's a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at. ~ Johnny Cash

A person knows when it just seems to feel right to them. Listen to your heart. ~ Johnny Cash

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

There are two kinds of people, there's those who like Johnny Cash, and those that will. ~ Marty Stuart

I know every Skynyrd and about all Johnny Cash songs. ~ Kid Rock

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out. ~ Johnny Cash

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities. ~ Rosanne Cash

The beer and the wurst were wonderful, but I was dying to be back in the South, where the livin' was easy, where the fish were jumpin', where the cotton grew high. ~ Johnny Cash

I am not a Christian artist, I am an artist who is a Christian. ~ Johnny Cash

Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted muderer in the song "Folsom Prison Blues,: Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are "probably drinkin' coffee." And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn't want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He wants coffee. Within the mind of a killer, complex feeling are eerily simple. This is why killers can shoot men in Reno just to watch them die, and the rest of us usually can't. ~ Chuck Klosterman

There's only one music video that had an emotional impact on me, and that's 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash. That's exceptional. There is no music video I can think of apart from that one that really reaches you inside. ~ Anton Corbijn

The gospel of Christ must always be an open door with a welcome sign for all. ~ Johnny Cash

I chose to be Mrs. Johnny Cash in my life. I decided I'd allow him to be Moses and I'd be Moses' brother Aaron, picking his arms up and padding along behind him. ~ June Carter Cash

meander, v.

"...because when it all comes down to it, there's no such thing as a two-hit wonder. So it's better just to have that one song that everyone knows, instead of diluting it with a follow-up that only half succeeds. I mean, who really cares what Soft Cell's next single was, as long as we have 'Tainted Love'?"
I stop. You're still listening.
"Wait," I say. "What was I talking about? How did we get to 'Tainted Love'?"
"Let's see," you say, "I believe we started roughly at the Democratic gains in the South, then jumped back to the election of 1948, dipping briefly into northern constructions of the South, vis-a-vis Steel Magnolias, Birth of a Nation, Johnny Cash, and Fried Green Tomatoes. Which landed you on To Kill a Mockingbird, and how it is both Southern and universal, which -- correct me if I'm wrong -- got us to Harper Lee and her lack of a follow-up novel, intersected with the theory, probably wrong, that Truman Capote wrote the novel, then hopping over to literary one-hit wonders, and using musical one-hit wonders to make a point about their special place in our culture. I think."
"Thank you," I say. "That's wonderful. ~ David Levithan

I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it. ~ Johnny Cash

I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing. ~ Nick Cave

I recently found myself going through a period of uncertainty about my future as a performer, my status as a personality, the believability of my Christian witness and the knowledge of God's will in my life. I felt a force bigger than myself saying, 'Lay back. Take it easy. Study hard. Read your bible. Think, write and keep your mouth shut for awhile.' ~ Johnny Cash

Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you. ~ Johnny Cash

We're all in this together if we're in it at all. ~ Johnny Cash

The hardest thing for me in Vietnam wasn't seeing the wounded and dead. It was watching the big transport jets come in, bringing loads of fresh new boys for the war. ~ Johnny Cash

Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free. ~ Johnny Cash

God bless Merle Haggard. He did all the things that Johnny Cash was supposed to have done. ~ Lewis Grizzard

'Beneath the Piano' by The Devil Makes Three somehow reminds me of an old Johnny Cash song. The song is a lot of fun and tells a story. ~ Ben Lovett

Okay, the question is, 'What enormously popular novel by William Peter Blatty, set in the posh Washington D.C. suburb of Georgetown, concerned the demonic possesion of a young girl?' '
'Johnny Cash', Henry replied.
'Jesus Christ!' Tricks Postino yelled. 'That's what you say to everythin! Johnny Cash, that's what you say to fuckin everythin!'
'Johnny Cash is everything,' Heny replied gravely... ~ Stephen King

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue. ~ Tom Morello

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. ~ Johnny Cash

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. ~ Johnny Cash

I've been really happy just traveling and being Mrs. Johnny Cash all these years. But I'm also really happy and surprised that someone wanted me to make another album, and I'm real proud of what I've done. ~ June Carter Cash

Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he won't answer any more. Not the whiskey drinking Indian, nor the Marine that went to war. ~ Johnny Cash

I learn from my mistakes. It's a very painful way to learn, but without pain, the old saying is, there's no gain. ~ Johnny Cash

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. ~ Johnny Cash

What would Warhol be without his paranoia, Hunter S. Thompson without his Quaaludes, Johnny Cash without his philandering? We Somebodies are not expected to walk the line. ~ J.T. Lawrence

It's good to believe in yourself, but there are people out there who can make or break you. ~ Johnny Cash

Understand your man, meditate on it. ~ Johnny Cash

When they held constant all the factors that typically push men into marriage, they found that actually getting married made a man less likely to commit crimes immediately thereafter.107 The causal pathway has been pithily explained by Johnny Cash: Because you're mine, I walk the line. ~ Steven Pinker

I'm thankful for a pair of shoes that feel really good on my feet; I like my shoes. I'm thankful for the birds; I feel like they're singing just for me when I get up in the morning ... Saying, 'Good morning, John. You made it, John.' I'm thankful for the sea breeze that feels so good right now, and the scent of jasmine when the sun starts going down. I'm thankful ... ~ Johnny Cash

Burn my Flag and I will shoot you ... but I'll shoot you with a lot of love, like a good American ~ Johnny Cash

When you sing, you pray twice. ~ Johnny Cash