My fans are very forgiving. So are my wives and my kids.

You'll never get ahead by blaming your problems on other people.

In church I was told that if I so much as smoked a cigarette or tasted alcohol, I’d be damned in hell for all eternity... it didn’t take long for me to start thinking that sounded all wrong... I didn’t cotton to the idea that your religion should be flaunted to other people. Your religion is for you, and is best kept close to your heart.

Do something bad a thousand times and it's no big deal. Everyone just goes, "Willie f - up again."

I started learning my lessons in Abbot Texas, where I was born in 1933. My sister Bobbie and I were raised by our grandparents [...] We never had enough money, and Bobbie and I started working at an early age to help the family get by. That hard work included picking cotton. [...] Picking cotton is hard and painful work, and the most lasting lesson I learned in the fields was that I didn't want to spend my life picking cotton.

If you've made your own hell, then only you have the power to escape it.

I think innately knew that music draws people together and that good music is liked by almost everybody.