There only have been two people on this earth that I was nervous around: Chet Atkins and Mickey Mantle. It's because of the respect I have for them.

For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with.

The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.

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.

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 finally came to terms with manic depression and lithium. I've taken lithium regularly for the past few years and have had no further bouts with manic depression.

Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously.

A fan will grab you and hug you and will not let go. When that happens, you wish it could be that way all over the world.

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.

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

Chet Atkins... is probably the best guitar player who ever lived.

Do you wish to see clearly and be free?

There is a power in the human mind ... to see things as they are ... but there is equally a power to see things as they might be.

History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their view. Or, at any rate, the victors' version is given prominence and holds the field.

All is born of water; all is sustained by water.

I think after 1970 or so, after I sold Soul City, I took off for awhile and didn't do too many gigs.

We can have peace if we let go of wanting to change the past and wanting to control the future.

He would be the finer gentleman that should leave the world without having tasted of lying or pretence of any sort, or of wantonness or conceit.

If you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with 'secondly'.

No one has the answers, but one thing is true. You got to turn on evil, when its coming after you.

By putting a border line between life and death, we separate the world of death from our world of life, casting the dead away into the "world of oblivion".