There are worse things than being thought a Republican.

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

There are worse things than being thought a Republican.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.