Tom T. Hall Quotes

I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.

If Barbara Walters was interviewing me, I'd figure her career was as dead as mine!

Nobody knows a hit before it's a hit.

I am a fan of history.

Whiskey's to tough, Champagne costs too much, Vodka puts my mouth in gear. I hope this refrain, Will help me explain, As a matter of fact, I like beer.

Make your melodies simple enough so that the average person can hum them.

Me and Jesus got our own thing going on. We don't need anybody to tell us what it's all about.

When I first got to Nashville, somebody said that [Kris Kristofferson and I] were the only two people who could describe Dolly Parton without using their hands.

I think the nature of songwriters is that they are philosophers, and philosophers have a bent towards poetry and songwriting, so I think that the two run around together. The nature of a songwriter could be philosophical. Looking for universal ideas, a way to say things, get the story across as a means of entertaining, provoking thought.

It is so important for me to try, and having tried I look back on failure and success as if it were all the same.

I never hid out. I was never big enough a star.

After I retired and came off the road, I gathered up all my musical instruments and suddenly, I wanted them all to be perfect.

When you retire, it's a place in life, a part of the journey. You just don't quit work; you develop an attitude where you can do what you please

She gave her heart to Jethro and her body to the whole wide world.

I had the notion that I wanted to write the great dirty American novel, so I went to Roanoke College on the GI Bill.

It's Faster horses, Younger women, Older whiskey and More money.

Old dogs care about you, even when you make mistakes.

I knew a lot of chords, but they weren't the chords that came with the melody that came with the idea I had for the song. Melodies are simple things. If you see a train wreck, there's a melody. If you see a little daisy blowing in the breeze, there's a melody.

I have my own religion. I'm sort of one-quarter Baptist, one-quarter Catholic, one-quarter Jewish.

Young kids are doing the same thing I did, but they're doing it differently. They don't do brain surgery the way they used to do it either.

I have had hundreds of people work for me over the years, and I don't think I ever fired anybody.

A song is a poem set to music.

My best album is called In Search Of A Song. That was my best shot right there. My finest hour, as they say. I could listen to the whole thing all the way through. There's nothing really crammed into it.

I love winners when they cry, losers when they try.

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.

I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups, bourbon in a glass, and grass.

A monkey was the President, though maybe not the first. And there was peace and harmony throughout the universe.

Is this really Butte, Montana, or just existential blues?

Songwriting is as much a craft as a talent.

God bless little children while they're still too young to hate.

Sinclair Lewis was asked one time to give a talk to class of students about writing. When he got there he asked the class, Do you people want to be writers?and they all said yes. Then Lewis said, Why the hell aren't you at home writing?

I never fixed a story. I didn't make judgments, I let the listener make judgments. When I got to the end of the story, if it had a moral, I let the listener find it.