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You don't paddle against the current, you paddle with it. And if you get good at it, you throw away the oars.

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.

If you can't get out of something, get into it. If you can't fix it, fuck it.

Tell the truth. Sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. 'Cause that's all that matters in the end.

There are points in your life, especially if you have creative ambitions, where selfishness is necessary.

If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself.

I believe in the herb, and if it were up to me, it would be legalized.

The number-one rule of the road is never go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself. You will break this rule, and you will be sorry.

I've been trying to think of things to tell my kids, something that I could pass down, and it's like, gee whiz, I maybe never learned anything that didn't contradict itself.

The closest I've come to knowing myself is in losing myself. That's why I loved football before I loved music. I could lose myself in it. Music and drugs and rock 'n' roll -- all of it is for you to lose yourself.

Kissinger had his reasons.

The older I get, the less conservative I become.

Dennis Hopper playing golf is one of the first signs of the apocalypse. It's true -- he's become a Republican.

It's hard to turn away when you feel like you are getting paid more than you deserve.

When I was thirty and a long time after that, I felt like I had to leave home to do what I had to do. Now, it's just the opposite.

The one thing I regret is missing the time with my older children when they were young. I think of it when I'm carrying my little four-year-old around. We'd already split up by the time my son was born, and I rarely got to hold him, but, fortunately, we are very close now. In fact, if I had to live with one person on an island, I'd probably live with him, 'cause he's the funniest son of a bitch I know.

I was a slow starter. I mean, I grew up in the fifties, and, jeez, I wasn't even laid in high school. Looking back on it, I didn't know anything, which was kind of unfortunate for my first couple of wives. When I found out that girls like sex as much as guys, I was, for many years, feeling like that was my function. I mean, I wasn't as bad as Clinton, but I was led by the pecker.

I'm sure you slow down a little bit, but I'm also sure that you'll probably be getting a hard-on until they throw dirt on you.

Being in love with a lot of people is incompatible with a stable family life.

The desire to be fucked-up probably leaves you, but the desire to be high never does.

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.

When was the last time you looked at the stars with the wonder they deserve? That they're out there is totally a mystery.

Freedom is just another word: It seems to get truer the older I get. It makes me think about the time when my apartment got robbed and everything was gone and I was disowned by my family. I owed money to a hospital and I owed my wife five hundred a month for child support and I thought, "I'm losing my job." I hadn't any money, I hadn't anything going for me, but it was liberating. I was in this Evangeline Motel, like something out of Psycho, a filthy place, just sitting there with this neon Jesus outside the door, in the swamps outside of Lafayette, Louisiana, and I thought, "Fuck. I'm on the bottom, can't go any lower" -- and from then on, man, I drove my car to the airport, left it there, and never went back to get it. Went to Nashville and called this friend of mine, Mickey Newberry, and told him I'd just got fired, and he said, "Great. Johnny Cash is shooting a new TV show. Come up, and we can pitch him some songs." The next moment, they cut three of my songs, and they were hits. I never had to go back to work again.

Originally published in the May 1999 issue

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