Sourced

• Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.
  • Opening lines at many of his concerts and public appearances.

• I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
  Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
  I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
  But is there because he's a victim of the times.
  • "Man in Black" from the album Man in Black (1971)

• 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.
  • Explo 72

• I love the freedoms we got in this country, I appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but I really appreciate my right to bear arms so I can shoot you if you try to burn mine.
  • From "Ragged Old Flag" on The Great Lost Performance.

CNN interview (2002)

Larry King Live (26 November 2002)

• Cash: I went into a coma and I was there for 12 days. They all thought I was dying and they couldn't diagnose what was wrong with me. They finally came up with a diagnosis of Shy-Drager syndrome. It was few months later they realized I didn't have that so it was Parkinson's. And then it was not that. Then finally it was autonomic neuropathy. ... And I'm pretty well resolved to the fact that that's what it is. And it's a slow process of the nerve endings.
  King: No cure?
  Cash: No, I don't think so. But that's all right. There's no cure for life either.

• I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life. Life is — the way God has given it to me was just a platter — a golden platter of life laid out there for me. It's been beautiful.

• People say, Well, he wore that body out. Well, maybe I did. But it was to a good purpose. They should be thankful that I wore it out to the purpose I wore it out and that was writing and recording and touring and doing concerts. Everywhere I could possibly do them that I thought I might enjoy them. I thought people might enjoy me.

• The line "because you're mine, I walk the line." It kept coming to me, you know? But I was — I was ... young and not been married too long. Yes, it kept coming to me. Because you're mine, I walk the line. And then the words just naturally flowed. It was an easy song to write.

• I think it speaks to our basic fundamental feelings, you know. Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.

• There's always rhythm going in my mind. ... I'm either singing them — June will tell you, I'm either singing them, or I have got the beat going from one, or I'm writing one.

• You can ask the people around me. I don't give up. I don't give up... 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 Man Comes Around" is a song that I wrote, it's my song of the apocalypse, and I got the idea from a dream that I had — I dreamed I saw Queen Elizabeth. I dreamed I went in to Buckingham Palace, and there she sat on the floor. And she looked up at me and said, "Johnny Cash, you're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." And I woke up, of course, and I thought, what could a dream like this mean? Thorn tree in a whirlwind? Well, I forgot about it for two or three years, but it kept haunting me, this dream. I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it's biblical. So I found it. Something about whirlwinds and thorn trees in the Bible. So from that, my song started and... "The Man Comes Around." The song turned out to be "The Man Comes Around."

Quotes about Cash

• We were in the studio, getting ready to work — and I popped it in, by the end I was really on the verge of tears. I’m working with Zach de la Rocha, and I told him to take a look. At the end of it, there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, "Uh, OK, let’s get some coffee."
  • Trent Reznor on the video of Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt". Rolling Stone (6 March 2003)

• There are two kinds of people, there's those who like Johnny Cash, and those that will.
  • Marty Stuart

• Every man knows that he is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash.
  • Bono

• Johnny was and is the North Star; you could guide your ship by him. The greatest of the greats - then and now.
  • Bob Dylan

• His face should be on Mount Rushmore as far as I'm concerned
  • Kid Rock