John Prine Quotes
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I think I've finally, after 72 years, gotten used to my voice, and it sounds like a friend now instead of an enemy.
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Yeah, early '71 is when I got my record contract. I had a record come out by August of '71. Things happened really fast.
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'Sam Stone' is a song about futility.
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In high school, I was a poor student.
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I grew up in Chicago, but I spent a lot of time down in Kentucky, and Kentucky was about 20 years behind the life that was in Chicago.
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'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.
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When I was a boy, my family used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy.
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I was a mailman walking in the snow six days a week, 12-hour days. Every two weeks, I'd get a check for $228.
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I try to write about things that actually happened so that I know it's real before I put it down on paper.
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Because of my song 'Sam Stone,' a lot of people thought I was interested in writing protest songs. Writing protest songs always struck me as patting yourself on the back.
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After cancer, I ain't scared of nothing.
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I don't like to see Christmas trees torn down.
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I was in the Army in the 1960s. I didn't go to Vietnam. I went to Germany, where I drank beer. But I did have an empathy with the soldiers in Vietnam.
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I like doing chores.
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For me, there's nothing like performing.
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When I turned 40, I invited Johnny Cash to my party, even though I knew there was gonna be 200 people roasting a pig and wild as can be. He didn't come, but the next day, I got a bowl of chili he'd made and a note that said, 'John, I'd love to come to your party, but that would mean I would have to leave my house.'
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I don't concern myself with where I fit in. I just keep my head down and keep doing whatever it is I'm going.
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In the Army, I was very good at avoiding my job!
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I think it shows when you have to work too hard on a song.
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I used to read a lot of Steinbeck, and I admired Roger Miller and Bob Dylan.
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The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in.
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I always feel like every song is the last song.
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When I'm making my own record, it's real work for me.
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You get to thinking that because you've written 50 or 100 songs, you think maybe you know how to do it. But when they're not coming along, you're just as in the dark as you ever were. When they're coming along, there's nothing to it. Sometimes it's so easy, it's like you're a court stenographer.