Dolly Parton Quotes

I know who I am; I know what I can and can't do. I know what I will and won't do. I know what I am capable of and I don't agree to do things that I don't think I can pull off.

down at the far end, with an untouched beer in front of him, sat Ethan Blake and his knife blade cheekbones. She couldn’t see his eyes under the brim of his baseball cap, but they were probably smoldering enough to start a fire.

In the good old days when times were bad
No amount of money could buy from me
The memories that I have of then
No amount of money could pay me
To go back and live through it again

Dark night, bright future
Like the phoenix from the ashes, I shall rise again

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.

Carl finally came home and would come to see me almost every night, usually staying to the wee hours. He was working with his father in his asphalt-paving business in South Nashville and I was living in Madison, Tennessee. Between that and the time he spent with me, he wasn’t getting any sleep at all. Finally, one day he said, quite matter-of-factly, “You’re either gonna have to move to the other side of town or we’re gonna have to get married.” That, to Carl, was a proposal. People always want to know how he asked me to marry him, and I always have to say, “He didn’t exactly ask.” Part of me was thrilled that he wanted to marry me, but another part was a little taken aback. That must have been the strongest part because that was the one that answered.
“You never have even said you loved me.”
“Hell, you know I love you,” was Carl’s answer.
I attribute this to that same kind of unspoken communication that I explained when describing life with my daddy. It is one of the Parton/Dean rules of conduct I have become a one-woman committee to abolish. Always at holidays or other family gatherings, people would hug and say good-bye, but they would never say “I love you.” Sure, I know that the love is there, but dammit, I want to hear it! I was the first one in my family, that I know of, to ever tell other family members that I loved them.
One day, after I had been living away from home for many years, I was saying good-bye to Daddy when I told him, “I love you.” He responded in the usual nonverbal, look-at-the-ground Parton way, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore.
I took his head between my hands and made him look me right in the eye. “You tell me you love me,” I demanded.
With no small amount of embarrassment he said, “Aww, you know I love you’uns” (a mountain word meaning more than one).
“Not you’uns!” I kept on. “This has got nothing to do with Cassie or Bobby or anybody else. I want to know if you” — I emphasized the word by poking my finger into his chest — “love me,”

When someone shows you their true colors, believe them.

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

I don't care what other people do as long as I'm left alone to do what I do and to do it my way.

If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.

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.

A lot of people get all turned off by the wig, the heels, the fingernails, the whole artificial bit. I do dress kinda pretty but old-fashioned. I think maybe I dress this way partly because of the image, you know, and partly because when I was a little girl growing up in a big old poor family, this was the way that the rich folks' wives dressed, when we'd see them drivin' through in their big old cars. As for the 'real me.' Well, under this wig, my own hair is about the same length and color, and I wear it about the same. But sometimes I'll dress up in a baggy old shirt and go out with my husband in a camper or something, just havin' ourselves a good time, and nobody recognizes me.

If you talk bad about country music, it's like saying bad things about my momma. Them's fightin' words

Be whatever your dreams and your luck will let you be.