Kris Kristofferson
Tell the truth. Sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. 'Cause that's all that matters in the end.Collection: Truth
If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself.Collection: Women
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.Collection: Freedom
I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.Collection: Truth
Never give up, which is the lesson I learned from boxing. As soon as you learn to never give up, you have to learn the power and wisdom of unconditional surrender, and that one doesn't cancel out the other; they just exist as contradictions. The wisdom of it comes as you get older.Collection: Wisdom
I had fought for my independence and fought for my freedom to do as I chose.Collection: Independence
I think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for - for its art.Collection: Respect
'Sunday Morning Coming Down' is probably the most directly autobiographical thing I'd written. In those days, I was living in a slum tenement that was torn down afterwards, but it was $25 a month in a condemned building, and 'Sunday Morning Coming Down' was more or less looking around me and writing about what I was doing.Collection: Morning
I feel like an old boxer. The brain's gone, but I can still move around.
I can interpret my own work honestly. And performing by myself seems to focus the attention in the right places.
That's who I wanted to be like was Bob Dylan.
Human rights is something that wasn't hard to be inspired to write about because there have been so many violations of those rights.
If it hadn't been for Johnny Cash, I'd probably have been a Nashville songwriter because that's what I had done for almost five years.
It's much better being an older father. You don't have to go prove to the world and to yourself that you're who you want to be, for better or worse.
What really makes me happy now is my home. I know that I have that to lose. But I don't see losing it. And I don't care if I never do another movie. And I don't care if I never get back on the road. I like to think that I'm gonna do that. But if I don't, I can live with that.
I used to think that my songs were the best things that I would leave behind me. And I definitely think my kids are now. For starters, they're writing better songs than I was at their age.
Havin' Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play.
I thought he was the greatest thing. Bob Dylan.
I remember having a lot of Josh White albums. Johnny Cash. Elvis. I loved the Coasters.
I grew up listening to Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, so arriving in Nashville in the '60s was really exciting for me.
When I was stationed in Germany, Johnny Cash was already a legend over there because he'd done some shows, then gone off to some bar straight afterwards and played just for the troops. So he was a real hero.
I watched Dylan record 'Blonde On Blonde' in my first week at work at CBS. It was just incredible.
If 'Bobby McGee' lasts, if 'Star Is Born' lasts, if 'Help Me Make It through the Night' lasts, if all of 'em last, man... who cares?
As far as fame, the everlasting fame thing. I used to think that was important for a writer... the desire to make your mark.
The most valuable thing to me seems to be time, and with time, I can be great. I have been... and I will be.
'Heaven's Gate' was based on a true story about the cattle people: the people who had the money turned on the settlers who were in the area. And it was mainly a defense of their behavior. And the cattlemen's association had just about declared war on these people who were poaching cattle, and because they were mainly immigrants.
There was time in the first half of the '80s when what I was saying on the stage was controversial. A lot of things I was talking about - Nicaragua and American foreign policy.
The first movie I was ever on was a Dennis Hopper film down in Peru.
I gave everything I ever wrote to Johnny Cash. I think he said later in some interview that he would take them home and throw them in the lake with all the other demos. I'm sure he got a million of them.
I have a special place in my heart for Nashville because it saved my life back in the day.
Every time I turn on the radio, I must be on the wrong song or something. But, to be honest, since I went on the road back in 1970, I didn't listen to radio music because I didn't want to subconsciously steal somebody's stuff.
There's a time where people were out holding posters in protest outside shows I was doing, and thankfully, we've moved past that. And a lot of country stations wouldn't play me. They were more conservative than I was.
It's always embarrassing when somebody does something praiseworthy of you.
My old man worked for Pan American.
Every album I've made is about what I'm experiencing at the time.
Bobby Bare is one of the greatest people in country music.
My albums really are like scrapbooks to me.
Looking back, I'm surprised I had the nerve to do it, but I'm glad I did. Performing the songs and performing in film was just a part of my personality, just like football and boxing at one point in my life. I was able to lose myself in both of them, and that was a good feeling.
Right after I resigned from the Army in 1965, I flew helicopters for oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. I flew personnel from rig to rig, and I'd live on a platform out at sea.
I think it's kind of odd that 'This Old Road' was the first video I ever did. Because of all of the work I had done in films and everything, you'd think I would have done a video before that.
'This Old Road' somehow seems to get better the older you get.
There was a film that really affected me, 'La Strada' by Fellini, where Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina travel around on his little motorcycle thing.
I did co-write 'Moment of Forever' with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.
I've never really felt comfortable co-writing. I usually go at my own speed, you know.
Songs are just like your kids. You love them all, and they're all different. I can't really pick out favourites.
Dylan's relationship with Johnny Cash was the biggest influence on Nashville in my lifetime - they opened up country music.
I ended up being friends with all my heroes. Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash - it was incredible.
I've come to appreciate how special a song is compared to other art forms, because you can carry it around in your head and your heart, and it remains part of you. It just comes as natural as a bird to me, always did. It's the way singer-songwriters make sense of our lives.
I've tried to be more self-sufficient as I've gotten older. I'd like to not worry about whether they're going to sell my next album or book. Hell, William Blake wasn't even published in his lifetime.
If you can't get out of something, get into it.