If it hadn't been for Johnny Cash, I'd probably have been a Nashville songwriter because that's what I had done for almost five years.
— Kris Kristofferson
I can interpret my own work honestly. And performing by myself seems to focus the attention in the right places.
Just the words and melody - that's what moves your emotions.
By not having to live up to people's expectations, I was somehow free.
When I wrote 'Help Me Make It Through the Night,' I was on an oil platform out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and was just thinking of myself.
Everything that I write is sort of autobiographical, and I don't know that I'm getting better, but I'm certainly running out of time.
I feel like I'm kind of lazy, but I keep the yard looking good.
The great thing about Nashville back in the day was that the old guys hung out where the young guys were. The established writers like Harlan Howard and Jack Clement gave us encouragement and passed the guitar, you know? Chet Atkins let me sit in on his sessions. Everybody was good to us, and everybody loved the music.
I wish my memory weren't so bad. They tell me it's from all the football and boxing and the concussions that I got.
I feel so lucky to have lived the life that I did and to be surrounded by the people I love. I've got eight kids, and they're always laughing all the time. It's like music to my ears. I think that my frame of mind these days is probably happier than I've ever been, which is kind of odd, coming close to the finish line.
The closest I've come to knowing myself is in losing myself. That's why I loved football before I loved music. I could lose myself in it.
I never thought of acting as a creative process. Christ, I used to go to the movies and see Brando talking like he was trying to sell shoes, and he was great. I thought anybody could do it. Then I tried it, and I got so uptight, I'm limited as to what I can do on film.
I got scars on my face that tell some kind of story. I'm looking in the mirror, and I got one scar that's really two scars - half from a baseball bat and half from playing football in college. I'll tell you, though, after a while, your face gets so wrinkled up you can hardly see them.
I've been writing songs since I was a little boy. You know, I think I wrote my first song when I was 11.
I grew up in a time when people believed in duty, honor and country. My grandfathers were both officers. My father was a General in the Air Force. My brother and I were both in the Army. I've always felt a kinship with soldiers; I think it's possible to support the warrior and be against the war.
If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself.
You don't paddle against the current, you paddle with it. And if you get good at it, you throw away the oars.
Human rights is something that wasn't hard to be inspired to write about because there have been so many violations of those rights.
I feel like an old boxer. The brain's gone, but I can still move around.
I really have no anxiety about controlling my own life.
I was working the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs, flying helicopters. I'd lost my family to my years of failing as a songwriter. All I had were bills, child support, and grief. And I was about to get fired for not letting 24 hours go between the throttle and the bottle. It looked like I'd trashed my act. But there was something liberating about it.
I feel like sometimes, when I'm singing a song like 'Moment of Forever,' that it goes both to your significant other and to the audience, and was it wonderful for you, you know? I think the best love songs I've written work on that level, like 'Help Me Make It Through the Night.'
I was never big or fast, but I got to play football and box.
I am grateful every morning I wake up. I've a big family full of kids, who laugh all the time and love each other.
To me, if you love it enough to devote your life to it, then you're doing the right thing.
I always had to wait until something hit me, and I could write it. But when I would cut an album, to me it represented the time that I spent since the last one. Just the way I was looking at the world.
When I was thirty, and a long time after that, I felt like I had to leave home to do what I had to do. Now, it's just the opposite.
There are points in your life, especially if you have creative ambitions, where selfishness is necessary.
I boxed in Golden Gloves at Oxford and still know how to throw a straight left jab.
If God made anything better than women, he kept it for himself.
I have no regrets. I feel very grateful for the life that I had - you know, family I live with; and I've been doing work that I love, ever since I came to Nashville.
Never give up, which is the lesson I learned from boxing. As soon as you learn to never give up, you have to learn the power and wisdom of unconditional surrender, and that one doesn't cancel out the other; they just exist as contradictions. The wisdom of it comes as you get older.
Tell the truth. Sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. 'Cause that's all that matters in the end.
Johnny Cash has always been larger than life.
That's who I wanted to be like was Bob Dylan.
I don't think I'm that good a singer. I can't think of a song that I've written that I don't like the way somebody else sings it better.
There are a lot of Iraqi people we can never pay back for what we've done.
I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.
To me, the best love songs work on two - maybe three - different levels, where you're talking about the person who you're right opposite, and all the people like that.
I enjoy looking back on my life. I'm thinking seriously about starting to write about it.
I hope that I'll keep being creative until they throw dirt on me.
Those 'Idol' shows are kind of scary to me. They wanted me to be on one of those panels one time, and I said it's the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do. I would hate to have to discourage somebody.
I never was one to go into an office and write. For one thing, I had a job. I was cleaning the ashtrays and setting up the studios at Columbia for a couple of years and working every other week down in the Gulf of Mexico flying helicopters. I didn't really get to just write songs for about five years.
The one thing I regret is missing the time with my older children when they were young.
I've never forgotten a single record I cut or a song I wrote.
I had a list of rules I made up one time. It says: Tell the truth, sing with passion, work with laughter, and love with heart. Those are good to start with, anyway.
I've had a life of all kinds of experiences - most of them good. And I've got eight kids and a wife that puts up with everything I do and keeps me out of trouble.
I think I'm a much better father as an older man than I was with my first kids. Occasionally, I have to yell at the little guys, but they don't take me seriously. 'Listen to the old guy,' they say. 'Isn't he great? He's mad.'
Freedom is just another word: It seems to get truer the older I get.
If you can't get out of something, get into it.
