There's nothing prettier in the world than a melody. I can get lost in a song with a melody.

No matter what song I recorded or sang, I did it my way.

Today they forget you in five years. They give an artist nowadays four or five years and that's it. Some of them don't have that. They get a couple of releases. If you don't sell two million copies, you're gone, you're out of here.

All Patsy Cline had to do was sing somebody else’s song and her version would outsell theirs because it would be so good!

I've had a lot of practice and wrong's what I do best.

Everybody knows in the business how I feel about country music. I'm an old traditionalist. Then they just call me an old man and stuck in my old ways, but with all the fans I've got out there, I can't be all that wrong. I do love traditional country music. I love the good stuff.

It didn't make much difference what time of night it was, whenever [my father would] come in drunk, he'd say, "Get up and sing me some songs." We didn't want to sing but we sang.