The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.

My theory is if you have a religion, it's a good one. Because some people don't have any at all.

The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.

I never fixed a story. I didn't make judgments, I let the listener make judgments. When I got to the end of the story, if it had a moral, I let the listener find it.

I am a fan of history.

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.

I have my own religion. I'm sort of one-quarter Baptist, one-quarter Catholic, one-quarter Jewish.

I love winners when they cry, losers when they try.

Young kids are doing the same thing I did, but they're doing it differently. They don't do brain surgery the way they used to do it either.

The first time with artistic endeavors is, if it's working, it was your idea, and if it's not, it's somebody else's idea.

People think because you're private, you have something you don't want them to know.

The best compliment I ever had is, one day I was in Nashville, some disc jockey said, Hey, that sounds like a Tom T. Hall song. Up until then there hadn't been any such thing.

Whiskey's to tough, Champagne costs too much, Vodka puts my mouth in gear. I hope this refrain, Will help me explain, As a matter of fact, I like beer.

I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.

This generation should entertain this generation. It's only fair. When I was a kid, I mowed the lawn. Now, somebody else's kid can mow the lawn.

After I retired and came off the road, I gathered up all my musical instruments and suddenly, I wanted them all to be perfect.

I had the notion that I wanted to write the great dirty American novel, so I went to Roanoke College on the GI Bill.

When you retire, it's a place in life, a part of the journey. You just don't quit work; you develop an attitude where you can do what you please.

I never hid out. I was never big enough a star.

I was quite a reader before I became a writer.

Faulkner was almost oriental. I never got into Faulkner.

I'm a very comfortable and happy-go-lucky old man. I never wanted to be great, because I'd just get worried.

My best album is called In Search Of A Song. That was my best shot right there. My finest hour, as they say. I could listen to the whole thing all the way through. There's nothing really crammed into it.

The first guy who came up with the concept of religion was sitting out under a tree. I'm sure of that.

It used to be that you'd have a song recorded by a major country artist and if it was a hit, you could buy a car. Now you can buy a dealership.

I have had hundreds of people work for me over the years, and I don't think I ever fired anybody.

If Barbara Walters was interviewing me, I'd figure her career was as dead as mine!

Religion is a strange, wonderful thing. More crimes have been committed in the name of righteousness than any other notion.

The first time with artistic endeavors is if its working it was your idea and if its not its somebody elses idea.

The enticing allure of Nashville is that there is always something new coming down the pike. Put this record on and you’ll hear footsteps.

Religion is a strange, wonderful thing. More crimes have been committed in the name of righteousness than any other notion

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.