Quotes from Marty Stuart

I don't know how it got around that I play a lot of instruments. I really don't. I play the guitar and the mandolin.

Well, I was dedicated to God before I was born by Momma and Daddy, and I was raised in a very traditional Southern Baptist home.

Well, the things that country music is parodied for sometimes - trains, drinking, sin, cheating, redemption, jailhouses, rambling, hoboing, on and on, all those things - according to The New York Times, every one of those subject matters is still relevant.

Well, the first band was at nine, and I was on the road when I was 12 with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers.

I went out on the road when I was 12 years old, playing with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers. That was the summer of 1972. We played Pentecostal churches, camp meetings, George Wallace campaign rallies and bluegrass festivals. As a kid, I had grown up watching quartets that were very entertaining.

Growing up in the Sixties, whether it was the Batmobile or the costumes Porter Wagoner wore or the music that came from there, California was the home of what a friend of mine calls 'custom culture.' It seemed like the promised land.

The only two jobs I ever had were with Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash.

When I was 5 years old, I got my first record. It was 'Flatt & Scruggs' Greatest Hits.' The second was 'The Fabulous Johnny Cash.'

Well, my heart finally found a home when I married Connie Smith, and I was tired of feeling bad. And it was time to grow up and get on with life.

I hate labels.

I've always been a sucker for a truck driving song.

Being sober and clear-eyed changes everything.

Some things you can never get back.

I saw footage of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley just hanging out together in Memphis when they were young guys getting started at Sun, listening to records together. That was beautiful to me.

Pop Staples was one of my true mentors.

When times are good, we have tunes to dance to; when times are tough, we're supposed to talk about it. That's country music.

He is irreplaceable. Even in death I have no doubt that Johnny Cash will continue to live on as an inspiration to musicians and songwriters and all of America.

The Ryman and the Grand Ole Opry, if you're a Southern boy, is just a way of life.

I've always loved gospel music. Being raised in Mississippi, it was kind of part of the atmosphere down there.

Growing up in Mississippi, the first song that I ever remember hearing, that captivated my mind and transported me from my bedroom out to the West, is a song called 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town' by Johnny Cash. That's when I was 5-years-old. And I played that song over and over again. I pantomimed it in school for show-and-tell.

If I go into the Mississippi Delta at pitch black midnight and put on a Robert Johnson record, it's hard to sit in the car because it's pretty powerful.

When I was 12 years old I discovered Bill Monroe and my dad got me a mandolin.

Nobody in my school knew who Bill Monroe was, or Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and barely Johnny Cash. Nobody spoke that language. I proceeded to get myself kicked out.

There wasn't really a lot of difference from a Mississippi perspective between what Elvis did on 'Mystery Train' or 'Milkcow Blues' or what Bill Monroe was playing or what Flatt and Scruggs was playing; it was rock 'n' roll to me.