You get up about 2-3 oclock in the morning and get through about 7 or 8 and 12 hours later you start all over. Thats the worst kind of work a person can do. You have to do these two shifts to get one day.

But most distinctly, I remember always saying to myself that when I get big, I'm not going to go to bed hungry, I'm not going to wear hand-me-down clothes.

I am who I am, I am what I am, I do what I do and I ain't never gonna do it any different. I don't care who likes it and who don't.

That was where my dream began to take hold, of not havin' to pick cotton and potatoes, and not havin' to be uncomfortable, too hot or too cold. That in itself had driven me to try to find some better way of life.

I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.

My mother told me on several different occasions that she was livin' her dream vicariously through me. She once said that I was getting to do all the things that she would have wanted to have done.

I remember as a kid being cold a lot, and hungry sometimes. Wed go to bed with just cornbread and milk, and I remember wearing shoes with holes in the bottom. I remember having twine for shoestrings.