I grew up not liking my father very much. I never saw him cry. But he must have. Everybody cries.

Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it.

Redd Foxx was the same gruff old codger you saw on television.

Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.

No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had.

It used to be that if you had a pretty good record, you could stop by a station in Little Rock or Atlanta and let the DJ listen to it. No way something like that can happen now.

It isn't reasonable to expect that everyone in the world is a country music fan. Not yet, anyway.

In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley.

I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started.

I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange.

The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use.

I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well.

There are worse things than being thought a Republican.

I don't care what the religion is called; as far as I'm concerned, one God, the God I adhere to, is in charge of all of them.