Kris Kristofferson

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

“Nothing ain't worth nothing but it's free.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I boxed in Golden Gloves at Oxford and still know how to throw a straight left jab.”

“The first movie I was ever on was a Dennis Hopper film down in Peru.”

“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.”

“There are a lot of Iraqi people we can never pay back for what we've done.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Your weight has to be behind the punch to make it matter.”

“The great thing about Nashville back in the day was that the old guys hung out where the young guys were. The established writers like Harlan Howard and Jack Clement gave us encouragement and passed the guitar, you know? Chet Atkins let me sit in on his sessions. Everybody was good to us, and everybody loved the music.”

“Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.”

“If you can't get out of something, get into it.”

“My old man worked for Pan American.”

“I had a list of rules I made up one time. It says: Tell the truth, sing with passion, work with laughter, and love with heart. Those are good to start with, anyway.”

“Bobby Bare is one of the greatest people in country music.”

“I was never big or fast, but I got to play football and box.”

“I ended up being friends with all my heroes. Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash - it was incredible.”