Best 137 quotes of Johnny Cash on MyQuotes

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.

All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren't worse or hate negativity and bitterness that things aren't better ...I choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren't worse.

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

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

A song stylist is, like, to take an old folk song like "Delia's Gone" and do a modern white man's version of it.

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

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.

Being rich means you get to worry about everything except money.

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.

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

Canadian Railroad Trilogy is an extremely fine piece of songwriting.

Come on boys, you must listen unto me, lay off the whiskey and let that cocaine be.

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

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.

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.

Everybody was wearing rhinestones, all those sparkly clothes, and cowboy boots. I decided to wear a black shirt and pants and see if I could get by with it. I did and I've worn black clothes ever since.

Every week, Dennis Day sang an old Irish folk song. And next day in the fields, I'd be singing that song if I was working in the fields.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Help me, Jesus. I know what I am.

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

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.

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

I always loved those songs. And with my high tenor, I thought I was pretty good - you know? - almost as good as Dennis Day.

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

I developed a pretty unusual style, I think.

I did [picking cotton] from - until I was 18 years old, that is. Then I picked the guitar, and I've been picking it since.

I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it.

If I'm anything, I'm not a singer but I'm a song stylist.

I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.

If you aren't gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.

If you have political convictions... keep 'em to yourself

I got really excited about it. But then we went into the studio and tried to record some with different musicians, and it didn't sound good. It didn't work. So we put together the album [Unchained] with just a guitar and myself.

I had an empathy for prisoners and did concerts for them back when I thought that it would make a difference - you know? - that they really were there to be rehabilitated.

I had a song called "Folsom Prison Blues" that was a hit just before "I Walk The Line." And the people in Texas heard about it at the state prison and got to writing me letters asking me to come down there. So I responded and then the warden called me and asked if I would come down and do a show for the prisoners in Texas.

I haven't been familiar with hard work. It was no problem for me. But first I hitchhiked to Pontiac, Mich. and got a job working in Fisher Body making those 1951 Pontiacs.

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.

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

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine I keep my eyes wide open all the time I keep the ends out for the tie that binds Because you're mine, I walk the line.

I keep my eyes wide open all the time.

I kept talking to my producers at Columbia about recording one of those [prison] shows. So we went into Folsom on February 11, 1968, and recorded a show live.

I knew Bob Dylan was searching for the truth and had been for years. And anyone who Really wants the truth ends up at Jesus

I knew that when I left there at the age of 18, I wouldn't be back. And it was common knowledge among all the people there that when you graduate from high school here, you go to college or go get a job or something and do it on your own.

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

I like to sit on the front porch of an old cabin I built in the woods and just listen to the birds; I like to fish in the pond and I always throw the fish back.

I love Bob Dylan, I really do. I love his early work, I love the first time he plugged in electrically, I love his Christian albums, I love his other albums.

I met Sam Phillips when he came in [studio] and I said, I'm John Cash. I'm the one who's been calling. And if you'd listen to me, I believe you'll be glad you did. And he said, come on in. That was a good lesson for me, you know, to believe in myself.