Parton Quotes & Sayings

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don't know what's goin' on, I then got the money, and gone. — Dolly Parton

I've been very fortunate. — Dolly Parton

I'll oil wells love you. I'll oil wells care. I'll oil wells need you. I want you oil wells dear. — Dolly Parton

I think your values are always influenced by your family and your community. — Dolly Parton

Don't judge me by the cover, 'cause I'm a real good book. — Dolly Parton

If I can hold God's attention, I can hold the world's.. — Dolly Parton

We give scholarships to high school kids and a new library of books to every preschool child in the county where I was born. I didn't have books at home so I did all my reading at school. I love books and I believe that helping kids to read gives them a great start in life. — Dolly Parton

I'm on a seafood diet - I see food, I eat it. — Dolly Parton

The hardest exercise for most of us fat people is that one where we push our chairback from the dinner table. — Dolly Parton

My girl crush is Dolly Parton. I've never met her, but I keep wanting to run into her in a grocery story or something! — Kimberly Schlapman

I didn't know any gay people in my childhood. — Dolly Parton

I look like a woman, but I think like a man. — Dolly Parton

I've never been a feminist. — Dolly Parton

I think country music is popular - has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it's simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches. — Dolly Parton

The bright bite in Mary Lee Kortes' voice [has] the high-mountain sunshine of Dolly Parton, with a sweet-iron undercoat of Chrissie Hynde. — David Fricke

You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try. — Dolly Parton

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that's left for you or to make one of your own. — Dolly Parton

Leave something good in every day. — Dolly Parton

We can't all be stars; we can't all be leaders. We are all God's creatures, living life, and we have that God light in us and we're supposed to let it shine. And not everybody wants to be like me and stick their neck out to get up on stage and perform. There are those like me, but there are also those that are of a shyer nature. And they're smarter than most of us that are out there showing our asses. — Dolly Parton

I love story songs because I've always loved books. — Dolly Parton

I love to flirt, and I've never met a man I didn't like. — Dolly Parton

It's over," Keelie said.
Too bad. But I want you to know, I will always love you."
She narrowed her eyes and said, "When you look at me and say that, are you thinking of Dolly Parton or Whitney Houston?"
Burt Reynolds," he said.
She nearly spit out her coffee when she laughed, then she said, "That almost makes me want to try again. — Becky Cochrane

Is forever longer than always? — Dolly Parton

I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world. — Dolly Parton

All the fame and fortune, glory and prestige, can't make me happy if it goes against what I believe. — Dolly Parton

I've never had a divorce, but I've seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can't write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I'm able to kind of express it, or their joy. — Dolly Parton

I never know tomorrow what I might be doing. I just ask God to lead me and show me and direct me and help me and support me in it. So I just wait to hear the call. — Dolly Parton

Sometimes if you jump into something too quickly, you can screw up something that might have been good two years down the road. — Dolly Parton

I'm more into the old-school country myself, like Dolly Parton, and I guess it wouldn't be typical, but I really love Linda Ronstadt. — Sara Rue

I think everyone should be with who they love. — Dolly Parton

I couldn't have children, I tried to for years. I've never been pregnant in my life. When I was a girl and fooling around I was scared to death I'd get pregnant, and then when I got married and wanted to have children I couldn't have any. But I don't miss it. I did for awhile, but I realize that I am everybody's mother. — Dolly Parton

If I'd married someone in show business, there'd be too much competition. — Dolly Parton

Daddy's working boots have taken many steps for us. — Dolly Parton

One is only poor, only if they choose to be. — Dolly Parton

I can be accused of trying to be commercial sometimes. — Dolly Parton

I don't like to get involved in things that I am not familiar with. I'm kind of a hands-on type of person. — Dolly Parton

I'll just wait right here for you cause I know your new love won't last. I wound easy, but I heal fast. — Dolly Parton

I'm no angel if that's what you thought you found. I was just the victim of a man that let me down. — Dolly Parton

After you reach a certain age, they think you're over. Well, I will never be over. I'll be making records if I have to sell them out of the trunk of my car. I've done that in my past, and I'd do it again. — Dolly Parton

A peacock that rests on his feathers is just another turkey. — Dolly Parton

Lee Iacocca, who said to Dolly Parton, Why do you need an airbag? Never got a dinner! — Red Buttons

It was never a marketing tool. People say that, but I dress this way for the same reasons I did when I first started doing it. It still comes from a serious place inside of me. I get up in the morning, and I think I just look better a certain way I do my makeup. I want to shine, I want to glitter. I'm not getting up thinking, "Oh, this'll get 'em." And I'm not doing it to make a statement. I'm just doing it to look like Dolly - the Dolly that I know and the Dolly that you know. — Dolly Parton

I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it's like a battery: you've got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person. — Dolly Parton

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.' — Dolly Parton

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them! — Dolly Parton

Depression runs in my family on both sides, and I have to be wary. — Dolly Parton

Paradise is a state of mind. — Dolly Parton

Wouldn't it be something if we could have things we love in abudance without their losing that special attraction the want of them held for us. — Dolly Parton

Being born was the worse and the first mistake I ever made. The doctor didn't spank me, he just slapped me in the face. — Dolly Parton

I never want anything more than what's fair. The problem is, I never want anything less either. In the old-boy school of business, if a woman walks away from the table with what's rightfully hers, the man feels screwed ... — Dolly Parton

I write a little something every day, even though I don't write a song [every day]. Everything inspires me. I'll come up with a line, or somebody will say something that will trigger something. — Dolly Parton

If I should stay
I would only be in your way
So I'll go, but I know
I'll think of you each step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
Bitter sweet Memories
That's all I am taking with me
Good-bye. Please don't cry
We both know that I'm not
What you need
But I will always love you
I will always love you. — Dolly Parton

I was happy to find out that when on tour, Dolly Parton doesn't use hotels but stays on her bus every night, to the point of having her buses shipped from Austria to Australia so she can tour the way she sees fit. I used one of her buses once - an honor. — Henry Rollins

My music is so mine, it's hard to turn it over to someone else. I have to be really involved in the production. It's like someone else taking care of your kids - if they don't treat them well, you're going to be pissed off. I'm actually co-producing [Backwoods] with my guitar player of 20 years, Kent Wells. We make a good combination ... I think we're going to have a real good record. — Dolly Parton

Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind our house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It's a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature. — Dolly Parton

I'm just a person; I like to experience whatever the feeling is and whatever I'm going through. — Dolly Parton

I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren't in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets. — Dolly Parton

I think god gave us talent because he screwed up our hair — Dolly Parton

I don't think of myself as a feminist, but if someone calls me a feminist icon, that's fine. I've always stood up for women and myself in general. I have a great love and respect, because I have had beautiful sisters, aunts and my grandmas, but I love men. I totally understand the nature of men. — Dolly Parton

In Parton's telling, the Village is "a permanent D.C. ruling class who has managed to convince themselves that they are simple, puritanical, bourgeois burghers and farmers, even though they are actually celebrity millionaires influencing the most powerful government on earth."17 It's not just the activist base of the left and the right who have recognized the widespread elite failure; more and more individual elites have broken ranks to acknowledge their own responsibility. — Christopher L. Hayes

A minute to Dolly's like a lifetime to everybody else. — Dolly Parton

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don't care who people are as long as they're themselves, whatever that is. — Dolly Parton

I can't keep somebody from being a star, and I can't make somebody a star, and nobody can. — Dolly Parton

You don't need to buy expensive cosmetics; almost anything will do if you know how to apply it. — Dolly Parton

If I see something saggin', baggin', or draggin', I'm gone have it nipped, tucked, or sucked! — Dolly Parton

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we've got more strength than we think we do. — Dolly Parton

I often get myself in love trouble because I'm so passionate; I love so much and so deep. — Dolly Parton

So here I was trying to get married to a man who hadn't really asked me, with a boss that didn't want me to and a town that wouldn't let me do it when I wanted. Yet I knew in my heart it was right. — Dolly Parton

Speaking of the devil, well here he comes now. Got my defenses down. And I'd go through hell to make him mine. — Dolly Parton

I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn't want them either, so it worked out well. — Dolly Parton

The only way I'd be caught without makeup is if my radio fell in the bathtub while I was taking a bath and electrocuted me and I was in between makeup at home. I hope my husband would slap a little lipstick on me before he took me to the morgue. — Dolly Parton

I am confident that partnering my Dollywood Company with a great company like Gaylord will create something truly special. — Dolly Parton

Fidelity is seven-tenths of business success. — James Parton

If people think I'm a dumb blonde, because of the way I look, then they're dumber than they think I am. If people think I'm not very deep because of my wigs and outfits, then they're not very deep. — Dolly Parton

I hope life treats you kind, and I hope you have all that you ever dreamed of, and I wish you joy and happiness. But above all of this, I wish you love. — Dolly Parton

God is in everything I do and all my work glorifies Him. — Dolly Parton

No, I can't do rap music! — Dolly Parton

Until I was a teenager, I used red pokeberries for lipstick and a burnt matchstick for eyeliner. I used honeysuckle for perfume. — Dolly Parton

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion. — Dolly Parton

Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say. — Queen Latifah

I don't have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song. — Dolly Parton

I've enjoyed all the parts of my career. — Dolly Parton

Life is a song to me. — Dolly Parton

If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one. — Dolly Parton

I would sit up on top of the woodpile playing and singing at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I would take a tobacco stake and stick it in the cracks between the boards on the front porch. A tin can on top of the tobacco stake turned it into a microphone, and the porch became my stage. I used to perform for anybody or anything I could get to watch. The younger kids left in my care would become the unwilling audience for my latest show. A two-year-old's attention span is not very long. So there I would be in the middle of my act, thinking I was really something, and my audience would start crawling away. I was so desperate to perform that on more than one occasion I sang for the chickens and the pigs and ducks. They didn't applaud much, but with the aid of a little corn, they could be counted on to hang around for a while. — Dolly Parton

I write for myself things that I've gone through. — Dolly Parton

My dream duet would be with Dolly Parton! — Elle King

I was not a natural beauty, and I always wanted to be pretty. I just have such an outgoing personality that it's fitting that I would be overdone. — Dolly Parton

Our own freewill, to choose the paths we take, no greater deed could ever be done than for another's sake. — Dolly Parton

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares ... if you don't really work them. — Dolly Parton

Music, I suppose, will be the thing that sustains me in the time of my life when I am too old for sex and not quite ready to meet God. It has always been an essential part of me. — Dolly Parton

'Wrecking Ball' is a great song. — Dolly Parton

Find out what you are, then do it on purpose — Dolly Parton

I wake up with new dreams every day ... more I can do to channel that into things that I love to create is healthier for me and probably for everybody around me. — Dolly Parton

A plot without action is like pasta without garlic, like Dolly Parton without cleavage, and like a writer without his similes. — Dean Koontz

That little Miley Cyrus ... she's like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she's Hannah Montana, but what people don't realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she's 40 years old! — Dolly Parton

Stop this attitude that older people ain't any good anymore! We're as good as we ever were - if we ever were any good. — Dolly Parton

One of the things I'm real proud of is I just made a deal with 20th Century Fox, and I've got my own production company now. I'm developing some television and movies for other people because I have a lot of fresh new ideas. To write is what I love the most. — Dolly Parton

If people work for me over the years, I expect them to be paid what they're owed, but I don't expect them to be paid more than they earn. — Dolly Parton

With me, it's so eclectic and all over the map that no one knows what to expect, ... It may not be a great career move, but all these things - singing with the Funk Brothers and the Dead, singing a Dolly Parton song - is great. I'm welcome to all these different worlds, and that's been wonderful. — Joan Osborne