Dolly Parton

"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."