“There’s no hall of fame for that working class hero, no statue carved out of stone. And his greatest reward is the love of a woman and his children.”

Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?

To me, songwriting is the backbone of Nashville.

Half of them I’d hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn’t even know it.

The music business doesn’t take up that much of my time.

Everybody was going on about it, so mom started hounding me more.

I have my little antique car collection, and when the weather is pretty I like to get out one of my old cars.

I’m usually just enjoying life.

Love is stolen in the shadows of the night. Though it’s wrong all along, it keeps going on as long as they keep it out of sight.

I have a little route I run down in the country, down Nachez Trace Parkway.

Pour me something tall and strong, make it a Hurricane before I go insane.

When I was in high school, I don’t know that I really had big dreams.

If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you’d say, “Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter,” but I try not to write them that they are so specific that they wouldn’t apply to anybody that has a child.

I always try to make the music that I like and think my fans will like.

I don’t write all my stuff.

I could have done a hundred songs, really.

“After 17” is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that’s kind of where I’m at in that part of my life.

Nora: what are you planning? Patch: i wouldn’t call this planning. I’d call this throwing a hail mary with seconds left on the clock.

The doors of churches, hotels, concert halls and reading rooms are alike closed against the Negro as a man, but every place is open to him as a servant.

I made it, Ma – Carnegie Hall. And I didn’t have to practice.

Judgments about who belongs in the Hall of Fame are extremely subjective.

It’s very easy to be cynical about the hall of fame. But on the other hand, it’s really a beautiful thing for someone like me. I dedicated my entire life to this music.

I like most kinds of music. So I haven’t got a bag, as they say. Except the big black one in the hall outside.

I went to the Hall of Fame with my dad. I can’t say I really remember too much about it.

Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change around me in the hall of eternity, I shall be the same.