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.

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.

There were no guarantees that country music, whose roots were in the South, were ready for Charley Pride.

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've seen people who have been coming to my shows for 25 years.

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.

I realize I was more of a curiosity to the older Nashville artists than the new ones.