“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.”

When God forgave me, I figured I’d better do it too.

Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform to.

Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.

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.

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

We’ll all be equal under the grass, and God’s got a heaven for country trash.

You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.

I’m not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I’m thrilled to death with life.

There’s a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there’s a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.

Death and hell are never full, and neither are men’s eyes.

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.

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

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.