I don't owe one man one cent. Anywhere.

Don't be a blueprint. Be an original.

Put your trust in the Lord and go ahead. Worry gets you no place.

You've got to capture an audience. You don't go out there and just sing, or just play. If you can't capture an audience, you might as well not be out there.

My health is good; it's my age that's bad.

Any game you play, you got to lose sometime.

The greatest thing the Democrats have ever done for me was to defeat me for the governor of Tennessee.

I'd like to be remembered as a man who went to Heaven and not another place.

Television made a lot of difference in country music. It's progress. I believe in progress.

I've done a whole lot of things. I've had the pleasure of introducing two presidents, several senators and congressmen.

My health is good it's my age that's bad.

If what he said was the truth, it broke her heart. If what he said was a lie, it was broken anyway.

My parents had torn through my innocence and left me with a tar-like substance that was corrupting what was left of me. I could feel it at night

Power is a delicate thing. The most powerful storms on earth intensify rapidly, but dissipate just as fast if not faster.

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even.

Walking with God down the avenue of prayer we acquire something of His likeness, and unconsciously we become witnesses to others of His beauty and His grace.

Until you've tasted it [anything], you can't really know it.

To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors.

My greatest weapon is mute prayer.

I write a column for The Village Voice, which I've done since time immemorial, and occasionally - and books. And I occasionally write minor notes for record albums and occasional articles.

You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.