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All the girls over there in Ireland are well versed in American country music. Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline are like king and queen over there.
John Prine -
Even when I was coming up in the singer-songwriter ranks during the early '70s, I thought that people who were stylists and stuff shoulda still been up on the pedestal. I mean, it's fine to recognize people who write songs, but it kinda got out of hand, you know?
John Prine
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I'm kind of like the Lone Ranger or Batman. I can just go to my mansion and jump out in my uniform and sing on weekends.
John Prine -
Ignorance is bliss as a writer, I think.
John Prine -
I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness get all swirled up inside you.
John Prine -
I have to have something that really excites me in order to write about it.
John Prine -
I embraced loneliness as a kid. I know what loneliness is. When you're at the end of your rope. I never forget those feelings.
John Prine -
To tell you the truth, the nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame totally surprised me. I had no idea that was coming. I know a lot of people like to say it's enough just to be nominated. But I've been nominated for so many things, I'd like to get this one. I think it's a long shot, considering I never had a No. 1 rock n' roll record.
John Prine
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I'll go to the movies and hear 'Angel From Montgomery' in some film, and nobody ever even told me about it. They don't tell you your stuff is going to be in a movie. They don't have to, so they don't tell you. You get paid eventually.
John Prine -
There is a certain comedy and pathos to trouble and accidents. Like when a driver has parked his car crookedly and then wonders why he has the bad luck of being hit.
John Prine -
It's usually drawing on personal experience. I don't think I could dig deep enough trying to get into somebody else's life. Like 'Far From Me' - I wrote it about this waitress that I was dating when I was fifteen or so, and she broke up with me.
John Prine -
I sound like that old guy down the street that doesn't chase you out of his apple tree.
John Prine -
It was always difficult for me to listen to my singing voice for the first 20 years or so. I mean, I really enjoyed singing, and I enjoyed doing live shows, but being in a recording studio and having to hear my voice played back to me would really drive me up the wall.
John Prine -
When I was a mailman, writing songs was my escape from the regular world, and now writing songs is my job. And I've always been one to avoid my job.
John Prine
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I did three club tours before I started playing concert halls, and the clubs were half full the first time around.
John Prine -
If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that's pretty good.
John Prine -
The Songwriters Hall of fame, that's the one all the big-time writers get into, the really great stuff, the Broadway stuff and all that. That would be something, to get your name in there.
John Prine -
I think the best duets are those where there's a dialogue back and forth, and then the two singers go into a thing together.
John Prine -
I'm not good at remembering things, in general.
John Prine -
I had a year-round Christmas tree with nothing but colored vinyl 45s hanging on it, like, old Elvis records and stuff.
John Prine
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I became a recording artist before I knew it. And I just - when I would listen to my old records, I'd just hear this young, extremely nervous fella that that made me want to run out of the room, you know, rather than listen to what he had to say.
John Prine -
I try to write about things that actually happened so that I know it's real before I put it down on paper.
John Prine -
'The Ways of a Woman in Love' is one of my very favorite early Johnny Cash songs. I like the way the lyric talks about the character walking by the girl's house and wishing he was the one in her arms.
John Prine -
In high school, I was a poor student.
John Prine