The older I get, the less conservative I become.
— Kris Kristofferson
I've tried to be more self-sufficient as I've gotten older. I'd like to not worry about whether they're going to sell my next album or book. Hell, William Blake wasn't even published in his lifetime.
I ended up being friends with all my heroes. Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash - it was incredible.
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.
I did co-write 'Moment of Forever' with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.
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.
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.
Bobby Bare is one of the greatest people in country music.
It's always embarrassing when somebody does something praiseworthy of you.
I have a special place in my heart for Nashville because it saved my life back in the day.
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.
The most valuable thing to me seems to be time, and with time, I can be great. I have been... and I will be.
Look at me! I can go from 'Donny and Marie' to Sam Peckinpah to Radio City Music Hall in one week.
I grew up listening to Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, so arriving in Nashville in the '60s was really exciting for me.
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 think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for - for its art.
What really makes me happy now is my home. I know that I have that to lose. But I don't see losing it. And I don't care if I never do another movie. And I don't care if I never get back on the road. I like to think that I'm gonna do that. But if I don't, I can live with that.
I've been trying to think of things to tell my kids, something that I could pass down, and it's like, gee whiz, I maybe never learned anything that didn't contradict itself.
Your weight has to be behind the punch to make it matter.
Dylan's relationship with Johnny Cash was the biggest influence on Nashville in my lifetime - they opened up country music.
'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.
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.
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.
I have no neighbors. I live in a small town where everybody is very protective of me.
Every album I've made is about what I'm experiencing at the time.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Being in love with a lot of people is incompatible with a stable family life.
I've come to appreciate how special a song is compared to other art forms, because you can carry it around in your head and your heart, and it remains part of you. It just comes as natural as a bird to me, always did. It's the way singer-songwriters make sense of our lives.
Songs are just like your kids. You love them all, and they're all different. I can't really pick out favourites.
I've never really felt comfortable co-writing. I usually go at my own speed, you know.
'This Old Road' somehow seems to get better the older you get.
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.
My albums really are like scrapbooks to me.
My old man worked for Pan American.
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.
The first movie I was ever on was a Dennis Hopper film down in Peru.
'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.
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?
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.
I thought he was the greatest thing. Bob Dylan.
Havin' Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play.
I had fought for my independence and fought for my freedom to do as I chose.
