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

Stop your ears and close your eyes and try to find the face of love.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It takes a real man to live for God-a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.

My arms are too short to box with God.

Until things are brighter. I’m the man in black.

Love is a burning thing and it makes a firey ring.

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I’m the biggest sinner of them all.

I came to believe in a power much higher than I.

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.

You can ask the people around me. I don’t give up. I don’t give up. I don’t give – and it’s not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don’t give up. I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I don’t believe in it.

The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don’t go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.

People are interested by talent. God is impressed by character

As long as I’m not selling out the people that ride or die with me, I’m glad I’m not an MC. I’m a motivational speaker. I’m not that rapper dude.

I still care about people but it would be so much easier not to care. I don’t want to get too close; I don’t like to touch things.

I want to speak to people directly as much as possible.

I hate the business part of music. Music is just like the streets. There’s loyal and disloyal people, people saying one thing and then don’t do it.

A lot of people perceive women as sexy based on their outer appeal. But there’s no way to mistake if a woman is confident.

A lot of times when you keep it real with somebody, you can’t expect them to keep it real with you. In this industry people just want to be famous and they forget how to keep it real and they forget to give credit to the people who helped them get to where they at.

Notorious sinners didn’t kill Jesus. Religious people did.