I learned how difficult it is to be an artist. There are always compromises. The record company wants you to do this, your fans want you to do this, …

- Robert Hilburn

There was a lot of sorrow in [Johnny] Cash's life. Even while he's trying to make music to inspire people he's fighting day after day with his own de…

- Robert Hilburn

Take any celebrity - all we really know is what they choose to tell us, or what they show us in public.

- Robert Hilburn

Country music is full of affairs and cheating; that's where all those Hank Williams songs come from.

- Robert Hilburn

It's important to realize that everybody who went into country music, and most everybody who went into rock and roll in the '50s, they had no more go…

- Robert Hilburn

He [Johnny Cash] always wanted to use his music to lift other people up, to say no matter how much trouble, there's hope. That was always his message…

- Robert Hilburn

I think it is hard to find happiness, as a whole, in anything. The days of tender youth are gone. I think you can be delirious in your youth, but as …

- Robert Hilburn

I haven't felt the excitement for so many years. I feel guilty beyond words about these things. When we're back-stage and the lights go out, and the …

- Robert Hilburn

Me growing up in the '60s and '70s, there was almost something romantic about drugs, Keith Richards taking drugs and stuff.

- Robert Hilburn