John Prine
My sense of humor has saved me more than a couple of times in my life.Collection: Humor
I just like a good, sad song. The sadder, the better. It moves me.Collection: Sad
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.Collection: Dating
I had a year-round Christmas tree with nothing but colored vinyl 45s hanging on it, like, old Elvis records and stuff.Collection: Christmas
I don't like to see Christmas trees torn down.Collection: Christmas
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.
As far as guitar picking, if I make the same mistakes at the same time every day, people will start calling it a style.
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.
I'd rather get a hot dog or a doughnut than write a song.
I'm not good at remembering things, in general.
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.
There's only two things. There's life, and there's death.
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 could never teach a class on songwriting. I'd tell them to goof off and find a good hideout.
I was kind of thrown into - I didn't expect to do this for a living, being a recording artist. I was just playing music for the fun of it and writing songs. That was kind of my escape, you know, from the humdrum of the world.
If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that's pretty good.
I think of the Bible as an unauthorized biography.
'Sam Stone' is a song about futility.
Kris Kristofferson and Steve Goodman were the two most unselfish people I ever met.
When you're singing somebody else's songs, it's just pure joy to me.
I used to read a lot of Steinbeck, and I admired Roger Miller and Bob Dylan.
I think I've finally, after 72 years, gotten used to my voice, and it sounds like a friend now instead of an enemy.
My fans have always taken care of me.
I think it shows when you have to work too hard on a song.
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 found it easier to make up songs than to learn other people's songs.
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.
Ignorance is bliss as a writer, I think.
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 some part of the review is true, those are the ones that sting.
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.
I always feel like every song is the last song.
I never fit in with straight country. I never really fit in with rock n' roll. I've always been somewhere in between all this stuff.
I like doing chores.
'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 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.
Never wear your necktie while you're operating a lathe.
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.
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.
When I'm writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.
People keep inventing all these new machines, and producers and recording engineers keep wanting to use them.
The more producers I talked to, the more I got looked at like I was crazy for wanting to make a live-sounding album.
In high school, I was a poor student.
I did three club tours before I started playing concert halls, and the clubs were half full the first time around.
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.
When I was a boy, my family used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy.
I don't like to be caught without a pick.
I hate to admit it to my wife, but I only wear two outfits on the road, and then a third one during the day, but I carry about 20.
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.
If somebody tells me to work or exercise, I go the other way. I'll come up with an excuse.