"It used to be that if you had a pretty good record, you could stop by a station in Little Rock or Atlanta and let the DJ listen to it. No way something like that can happen now."

"Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously."

"It isn't reasonable to expect that everyone in the world is a country music fan. Not yet, anyway."

"The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls."

"I grew up not liking my father very much. I never saw him cry. But he must have. Everybody cries."

"A black man singing about a blond girl was potential trouble."

"I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange."

"For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with."

"What qualifies me to tell people how to act or what to think? I'm Charley Pride, country singer. Period."

"No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had."

"Chet Atkins... is probably the best guitar player who ever lived."

"Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did."

"Redd Foxx was the same gruff old codger you saw on television."

"Even now, when I'm asked how I'm doing, I like to reply, 'Pretty good. I've got all my fingers and both eyes."

"Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it."

"What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't."

"I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well."

"There are worse things than being thought a Republican."

"Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting."

"I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started."

"There is an intimacy about the Opry Theater that gives an entertainer a special charge."

"Fans will praise you, scold you, and offer helpful advice. Fans will also defend you."

"Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing."

"I think there's enough room in country music for everybody."

"When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out."

"Any entertainer who tells you that the adoration of fans is not a heady experience probably never had the experience."

"The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use."

"I don't care what the religion is called; as far as I'm concerned, one God, the God I adhere to, is in charge of all of them."

"A fan will grab you and hug you and will not let go. When that happens, you wish it could be that way all over the world."

"In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley."

"Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs."