“You can’t put this possum in a cage”

Some of them don’t have that. They get a couple of releases. If you don’t sell two million copies, you’re gone, you’re out of here.

Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad.

Don’t let the ‘business’ change what it is you love because the people, the fans, respond to what is heartfelt. They can always tell when a singer is faking it.

If you’re gonna drive me crazy baby, drive me to drink.

It didn’t make much difference what time of night it was, whenever [my father would] come in drunk, he’d say, “Get up and sing me some songs.”

I love what I’ve done and I just can’t stand to see what they’re doing to it. But I’ve learned to live with it because that’s what they’ve done. They’ve come in with the modern sounds. I call it modern pop. It’s not country anymore.

We didn’t want to sing but we sang.

After the first couple of years recording I did a lot of praying. I said, ‘Lord, please give me a hit.’ I want one so bad.

The only thing different between sinners and saints is one is forgiven and the other ain’t.

Today they forget you in five years. They give an artist nowadays four or five years and that’s it.

If people liked your singing well enough, if you were special to them, then you never left their minds throughout all of the years.

I just thank God I’m still here and the main thing is to try to get closer and closer to Him as much as I can so that I can treat my friends and my family the way they should be treated.

He stopped loving her today, they placed a wreath upon his door.

Anybody who loves country music loves gospel.

Be real about what you do. Stay true to the voice inside you.

I just want to keep living on and enjoying food! Even though I’m gaining weight,

I’m not living with you. We occupy the same cage. (Maggie)

Liberty? Why it doesn’t exist. There is no liberty in this world, just gilded cages.

The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.

A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.