Johnny Cash Song Quotations

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.

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!

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.

There's no insecurity about my song writing. 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.

and then come back with a song I can sell.

If you can hold your listener, hold their attention, and you're sure you know what you're doing, and know that you're communicating - You know, performance is communicating. You've got to communicate. You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut.

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.

After about three lessons [my] voice teacher said, "Don't take voice lessons. Do it your way. You're a song stylist. Always do it your way."

I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God.

The first time I knew what I wanted to do with my life was when I was about four years old. I was listening to an old Victrola, playing a railroad song...I thought that was the most wonderful, amazing thing...That you could take this piece of wax and music would come out of that box. From that day on, I wanted to sing on the radio.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones. I can't do a concert without singing a gospel song. It's what I was raised on.

It makes me so mad that some people underestimate the wisdom and energy of young people. All because they don't look the way older folks think they should look. I'm working on a song about it. Maybe some of those closed minded people will realize long hair and tattoos don't mean they should be ignored. Close minded people are part of what's wrong with this world.

Because you're mine, I walk the line.

Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, I got on my knees and told her that I was going to marry her some day. We were both married to someone else at the time. ‘Ring Of Fire’—June and Merle Kilgore wrote that song for me-that’s the way our love affair was. We fell madly in love and we worked together all the time, toured together all the time, and when the tour was over we both had to go home to other people. It hurt.

By the time I actually recorded Bitter Tears I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of those songs... I expected there to be trouble with that album, and there was.... when it was released, many radio stations wouldn't play it.... The very idea of unconventional or even original ideas ending up on "country" radio in the late 1990s is absurd.

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

My way of communicating with God as a boy (and often even now) was through the lyrics of a song. . . . So I didn't have the problem some people do who say, "I don't know how to pray." I used the songs to communicate with God. . . . To me, songs were the telephone to heaven, and I tied up the line quite a bit.

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.