124 Quotes by Rosanne Cash

In normal circumstances, you would be allowed the time to process your grief and then to get some distance so you can get back to your own life. Me and my sisters and my brother, we've never gotten any distance.

But I also love being in the studio because there's none of the anxiety of pre-show stuff, and worried is my voice going to work and blah blah blah.

There's always that moment when you realize what it's going to be. You might have an overarching theme and you need to fill in the blanks - and then there's this "Aha" moment when you see where it's going. That's the most satisfying part of writing.

I couldn't listen to music with lyrics for the first few months after the brain surgery, because they were too complex and disturbing. So I listened to a lot of classical music. I didn't really want to read, either, so I listened to books on tape or watched movies. I also re-taught myself all of my childhood piano pieces. It helped me repair my brain.

I'm not the type to turn to drugs and alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music - and children.

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities.

If you're playing in a tradition and you have no reference point to it, no understanding and have not studied it, I can't respect that.

Think about all of the families where the father is a doctor and the son is a doctor or generations of coal miners. Why did they go into that line of work? Because that's what they were taught. Or was it in their genes? It's not an either/or question. It's both. I was inclined in that way. I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.

Being in Vietnam changed him [Johnny Cash] fundamentally. He was devastated when we went into Iraq.