All Quotes

"I think I’m a star to everybody but me, I always wanted to be famous, but nobody could have thought of the extent it became. I’ll see a whole wall of my pictures somewhere, and I’ll wonder ‘How did that happen?’ It’s more a joy than a surprise."

"I’ll go into a closet and wonder, ‘Now, what in the hell did I come in here for?', There’s nothing that makes me happier than writing a song."

"I think the one that’s most personal to me is the lil’ 'Coat of Many Colors,' because it talks about my mom, my parents, and kind of gives you an insight. It also covers bullying, acceptance and all that."

"I’ve been grateful for every good thing ever happened, God has always blessed me, surrounded me with good people. I pray that every day God will bring all the right things, all the right people, into my life."

"I’ve been at this so long, I’ve worn some of the most bizarre things – my hairdos have always been so out there, At the time you think you look good, then you look back on it, like, what was I thinking?"

"I’ve always been true to myself,” she says. “That was what my mama always used to say: to thine own self be true. I put a lot of stock in that. Everything I do, whether it’s my personality, how I conduct myself and business, or whatever, if I do it my way, according to what I understand and believe, there’s a strength in that. You can think, ‘I can stand by this, I can live by this."

"I think words and titles just have such connotations, When I think about a ‘feminist’, you think about women that are anti-men, and you think of women that have been so mistreated, they have to make some sort of a statement. I’m all about women, I’m all about empowering women, but I’m all about empowering all people – love and respect and uplifting [them]."

"Even within my own family, especially the last few years since Trump and Biden, all that, it’s like we can’t even go to a family dinner any more. Especially if people are drinking – they get in a damn fight at the table."

"This is amazing to me how people look to me, that’s a big responsibility. There ain’t nobody that good. I’m not all that. I make a joke – I’m not even all there. I try to just be a decent human being, try to use love as my great tool and weapon. I try to leave my heart, my eyes, my ears open, and my mouth closed, when I know it’s not the right thing to be doing."

"I’m almost 78 years old. When you get older, you see everything, you’ve been through everything, and you can take a new spin on something that might have been right for you 10, 15 years ago."

"My joke [is that] if I have any regrets, it’s that I got caught with some of the stuff that I had no regret about."

"In January 2025, Dolly shared, "I think I'm a star to everybody but me... I always wanted to be famous, but nobody could have thought of the extent it became."

"Following the death of her husband in March 2025, Dolly released the song "If You Hadn't Been There," expressing gratitude for his unwavering support throughout their nearly 60-year marriage"

"Due to health challenges, Dolly postponed her December 2025 Las Vegas residency. She humorously referred to it as her "100,000-mile check-up," clarifying it wasn’t related to cosmetic surgery."

"In October 2025, Dolly reassured fans about her health, saying, "I don’t think God is through with me... I ain't done working." She humorously added, "I ain't ready to die yet.""

"In a 2024 interview with The Guardian, Dolly addressed speculation about her retirement, stating, "I can’t retire. I always say I’ve dreamed myself into a corner. I’ve got to keep all those dreams alive. Every dream spins off into something else.""

"Dolly’s big in Iceland. Her voice is immaculate, really powerful. Her character is so warm and human, and she has a great sense of humor. All my friends love Dolly, and most of them are people who would never listen to country music. It doesn’t happen very often when you get a character that is sort of larger than life. I don’t like rock music, but I like Kurt Cobain. He could be playing any style of music and I would have been interested. You know? And I think Dolly is like that. She is an incredible singer, an incredible songwriter."

"I met Dolly Parton in Tennessee; her titties were filled with Hennessy. That country music really drove me crazy, but I rode that ass and said, "Yes, Miss Daisy!""

"There's a lot of difference between songwriting and poetry, and I think that's what gets lost. Most lyrics do not read well. They sing well...I'll tell you who writes well, though, as I'm sure you're aware, and that's Dolly, Dolly Parton."

"it takes guts to be a woman under patriarchy. I mean, Dolly Parton is like an image of a super-femme, but she has this certain brassiness, she just has to have total guts to survive around men and to have her image be so female. She's the kind of person that a drag queen would emulate, because she is using that female, or femme facade, which is like Marlene Dietrich or Mae West or Dolly Parton or any of those gutsy women over the years who drag queens have chosen to emulate, especially the ones who do female impersonation. There's the other edge to them besides the femme facade that is totally gutsy and a real survivor of the world"

"This will sound crazy, but when I was interviewing Dolly Parton, I almost felt like she had healing powers."

"She seemed astonishingly unaffected. It was a bizarre contrast. She looks like a totally artificial creation, with the amazing blond wig and the 6-inch skyscraper heels and the bosom that makes her, no doubt, the unchallenged record holder and defending champion at Frederick's of Hollywood. Then she walks up to you and says, "Hi! I'm Dolly Parton!" The introduction is as unnecessary as if, say, John Wayne had walked up and said, "Hi! I'm John Wayne!" What is the proper response? "Yes, of course you are”? Dolly Parton spent about half an hour shaking everybody's hand and leaving behind a wake of people telling each other, "Gee, she's really nice," as if, well, as if somehow she shouldn't have been. There is a way in which we behave in public, in situations with a lot of strangers that implies a level of polite, subtle hostility. We are reserved. We check out the room for traps and hazards. We are uncomfortable, confronted with a hundred unfamiliar faces. What Dolly did was to come in with her brash, unaffected personality and sweep away all that paranoia in a rush of good will. It left everybody standing around afterward feeling a little goofy."

"Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver."

"L'écrivain original n'est pas celui qui n'imite personne, mais celui que personne ne peut imiter."

"Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them."

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

"When you look for the motivations you always go to the basic instincts, to the basic emotions, the basic things that have moved humankind always. That's what all writers write about, ultimately. What did Shakespeare write about? Jealousy, love, sex, power, greed, the same stuff that soap operas and the Bible are made of. It's always the same."

"Writing is like training to be an athlete. There is a lot of training and work that nobody sees in order to compete. The writer needs to write every day, just as the athlete needs to train. Much of the writing will never be used, but it is essential to do it. I always tell my young students to write at least one good page a day. At the end of the year they will have at least 360 good pages. That is a book."

"The written word is an act of human solidarity. I write so that people will love each other more."

"Writing is a terrible way to make a living, almost as bad as criticism."

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."

"Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent."

"I am a galley slave to pen and ink."

"When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward."

"The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps."

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."

"When that passage was written only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now only God understands it."

"SCRIBBLER, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own."

"These two rules make the best system: first, have something to say; second, say it."

"So I had this problem—work or starve. So I thought I'd combine the two and decided to become a writer."

"A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"The personal essay is vulnerable. It cannot stand upon its footnotes."

"That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters."

"The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood."

"Oh that I had the art of easy writing What should be easy reading! could I scale Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing Those pretty poems never known to fail, How quickly would I print (the world delighting) A Grecian, Syrian, or Assyrian tale; And sell you, mix'd with western sentimentalism, Some sample of the finest Orientalism."

"I've half a mind to tumble down to prose, But verse is more in fashion—so here goes!"

"A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one."

"In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded."

"Writing is a lonely occupation at best. Of course there are stimulating and even happy associations with friends and colleagues, but during the actual work of creation the writer cuts himself off from all others and confronts his subject alone. He moves into a realm where he has never been before — perhaps where no one has ever been. It is a lonely place, even a little frightening."

"The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters."