Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by John Prine

I used to read a lot of Steinbeck, and I admired Roger Miller and Bob Dylan.

If somebody tells me to work or exercise, I go the other way. I'll come up with an excuse.

I sound like that old guy down the street that doesn't chase you out of his apple tree.

Man, I hated school. I'd stare at the buttons on the teacher's shirt the whole class.

My sense of humor has saved me more than a couple of times in my life.

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.

I never gave up on 'Archie.' I started picking up 'Archie' comics when I was in my thirties, and then I started subscribing to them.

I have to have something that really excites me in order to write about it.

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.

It doesn't hit you until you pull up to the hospital, and you see 'cancer' in big letters, and you're the patient. Then it all kind of comes home.

Never wear your necktie while you're operating a lathe.

Howie Epstein was a kind, patient, and extremely talented musician. He took two years out of his life and dedicated his undivided attention to the making of two of my records. Those records changed my life thanks to Howie.

When I'm writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.

I like doing chores.

I don't like to be caught without a pick.

I wrote most of 'Hello in There' in a relay box, which looks like a mail box, only bigger. Sometimes, it was so cold and windy on my mail route that I'd go inside the relay box and eat a sandwich, just to get away from the wind. I remember working on 'Hello in There' inside the relay box.

I thought I was grounded. I thought from my kinda blue-collar outlook on life that I would call myself a grounded person. I was not. I was like a balloon flying around in the air. And as soon as our first child was born, boom - my feet came right down to the ground.

I did three club tours before I started playing concert halls, and the clubs were half full the first time around.

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.

I'm not good at remembering things, in general.

If some part of the review is true, those are the ones that sting.

I don't like to see Christmas trees torn down.

I think if you write from your own gut, you'll come up with something interesting, whereas if you sit around guessing what people want, you end up with the kind of same schlock that everybody else has got.

After a couple bouts with cancer and everything, black cats are nothin', you know?

If you listen to people talk, when people actually talk, they talk in melodies. If they get angry, their voice rises, and it's more of a staccato thing. When they ask for something, they're real sweet. It's all music.

If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that's pretty good.

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.

Ignorance is bliss as a writer, I think.

The more producers I talked to, the more I got looked at like I was crazy for wanting to make a live-sounding album.

I feel basically good about my career because it's remained constant. What I do has never been especially in vogue or gotten high on the charts. At the same time, I haven't had to stop performing any of my music because it aged in style.

I take my own syrup, ketchup, and mustard, just in case of emergencies, in my suitcase. Whatever I can steal from the hotels. It's usually Heinz ketchup, and they give you a weird mustard. You don't get French's or anything; you get some sort of Dijon or some mustard. That's just for hot dogs. I don't use mustard for anything else.

You know that first love that leaves you? You never forget that, especially if you're a songwriter. I must have gotten nine songs out of that girl.

I had a year-round Christmas tree with nothing but colored vinyl 45s hanging on it, like, old Elvis records and stuff.

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.

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.

Soon as I could play one guitar chord and laid my ear upon that wood, I was gone. My soul was sold. Music was everything from then on.

In my songs, I try to look through someone else's eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.

I'd rather get a hot dog or a doughnut than write a song.

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.

I could never teach a class on songwriting. I'd tell them to goof off and find a good hideout.

Along the way, we have had some wonderful adventures and have met thousands of dedicated fans - indeed, many of them feel like family to us now.

In high school, I was a poor student.

I guess what I always found funny was the human condition.

Kris Kristofferson and Steve Goodman were the two most unselfish people I ever met.

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.'

I think it shows when you have to work too hard on a song.

As far as guitar picking, if I make the same mistakes at the same time every day, people will start calling it a style.

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.

There's only two things. There's life, and there's death.

I just like a good, sad song. The sadder, the better. It moves me.

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.

'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.

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.

I was kind of shy as a lad, and a lot of things that made me laugh, I found, did not make other people laugh.

Yeah, early '71 is when I got my record contract. I had a record come out by August of '71. Things happened really fast.

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.

The only time I ever think about getting old is when I look in the mirror. I feel pretty good about it, actually.

I always feel like every song is the last song.

Johnny Cash was like Abraham Lincoln to me.

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.