Dolly Quotes

“They think I’m simpleminded because I seem to be happy. Why shouldn’t I be happy? I have everything I ever wanted and more. Maybe I am simpleminded. Maybe that’s the key: simple.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“When someone shows you their true colors, believe them.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap, honey,”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“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, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“Be the alligator girl. Be whatever your dreams and your luck will let you be. Wear your green cornflakes with pride. Snarl at the crowds, and do your best to make them flinch. Give them a quarter's worth of wonder.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“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. I tried the Scarsdale diet and the Stillman water diet (you remember that one, where you run weight off trying to get to the bathroom). I tried Optifast, Juicefast, and Waterfast. I even took those shots that I think were made from cow pee. I endured every form of torture anybody with a white coat and a clipboard could devise for a girl who really liked fried pork chops.
One night while I was on some kind of liquid-protein diet made from bone marrow, or something equally appetizing, I was with a group of friends at a Howard Johnson’s and some of them were having fried clams. I’ll never forget sitting there with all of that glorious fried fat filling my nostrils and feeling completely left out. I went home and wrote one of my biggest hits, “Two Doors Down.” I also went off my diet and had some fried clams.
There were times when I thought of chucking it all in. “Damn the movie,” I would say. “I’m just gonna eat everything and go ahead and weigh five hundred pounds and have to be buried in a piano case.” Luckily, a few doughnuts later, that thought would pass and I would be back to the goal at hand. I remember something in a book I read called Gentle Eating. The author said you should pretend the angels are eating with you and that you want to save some for them. I loved that idea, because I love angels. I have to admit, though, there were times I would slap those angels out of the way and have their part too. A true hog will do that.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“That day on the set, after talking to Carl, she came over to me and asked, “What did Carl mean when he said that you’re an angel?” I didn’t know what he had said, but I was naturally dying to hear more. Jane went on, “I was telling him how sweet you are and how easy you are to work with, and he said, ‘Well, she’s an angel.’ I kinda laughed and said, ‘Yeah, she is.’ But he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘No, you don’t get it. She’s a real angel.’”
I was flattered and honored that Carl thought that. It’s just like him to say it to somebody else, figuring I’ll never hear about it.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“When I discovered that there was actually a thing called a push-up bra, that, to me, had to be equal of the day Einstein figured out that relativity thing.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“People ask me, “Do you ever run out of patience? Are you ever rude to people?” Sometimes I am. I hate when it happens, but it seems like some people just try to get on your nerves. There are times when I feel like saying something like, “Why don’t you get out of my face, you ugly woman. And take those bratty kids with you!” But at times like that I usually get all flustered. I get confused and say stupid stuff like, “Kiss my ass, that’s what you are. And don’t think I can’t do it!”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“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, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“Carl picked me up right on time. He has always been prompt. He has also always been mysterious. He didn’t give me any kind of hint as to where we were going, so I didn’t know how to dress or anything. As we drove along, I was trying to see what part of town we were heading for to get some clue as to what was up. I was surprised when we pulled into the driveway of a private home. Carl walked me to the door and opened it.
Inside, his mother was just putting supper on the table. Without any other word of introduction Carl said to his mother, “Fix this girl a plate. She’s the one I’m going to marry.” With a nervous laugh I tried to acknowledge that he had made a little joke. But something in his voice told me he hadn’t. In all my life, I have never felt such an odd combination of emotions. First, I was shocked that he wanted to marry me, since he had never given me any indication that he cared that much for me. Second, I was astounded. I remember thinking, “Who the hell does this guy think he is?” I felt flattered, outraged, touched, turned on, scared to death, and completely confused. The boy back home who had bought the house was not even this presumptuous. At least he had said he loved me at some point.
There I was, feeling as mixed up as a road lizard in a spin dryer, and having to act sociable while trying to keep my dinner down. I somehow got through the meal and worked things out in my own mind enough to keep seeing Carl.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“I’ll never forget this one night when Daddy had taken us way out to a little church up on a high ridge. There was no kind of instrumentation, and the hymns were all sung a cappella. During the preaching, there was a little more shouting from the congregation than usual. When it came time for us to sing, we were introduced by the preacher, a wiry little man with kind of a fiery look in his eyes. We stepped to the front and took our places on the old wood-plank platform to one side of the pulpit. Softly, I sung a note to get us started because it was decided I could come closest to hitting a key that we could all sing in. We began our songs, just as we had planned. I was aware that the pastor was on the stage behind us, but I didn’t think anything of it.
After a while, I could feel Stella nudging me in the ribs, trying not to be noticed. I looked at her, and she motioned with her head slightly back toward where the preacher was standing. He seemed to be totally wrapped up in the spirit, nearly in a trance. I didn’t think too much of it, until I spotted a familiar sight—the back markings of a snake, a cottonmouth moccasin. I had seen them in the woods, usually scurrying across the path toward cover. They were afraid of me, and I was afraid of them. And up to now, we had always managed to keep our distance from each other. Here, apparently, they were a part of the worship service. I could see now, out of my peripheral vision, that the preacher had a full grown cottonmouth by the back of the head and it was twisting and coiling all around his forearm.
Some members of the congregation were reaching out as if they wanted to touch it. The preacher was getting more and more worked up, and he reached into a wooden crate by the pulpit and took out two more snakes. This time he seemed to be holding them much more carelessly. He lifted them near his face as if daring them to strike.
We sisters just kept on singing, unconsciously moving away from the snakes until we were very near the front of the platform. Just then, I noticed something that struck a note of fear in my heart much greater than that inspired by the snakes. My father had stepped into the back of the church to hear his little girls sing. Whatever he had been drinking didn’t impair his ability to see exactly what the preacher had in his hands. Just at that moment, the man and his snakes took a step toward the congregation, thus toward us.
Daddy had seen enough. He charged down the aisle like a wild boar through a thicket. “You get them Goddamn snakes away from my kids!” Daddy bellowed with a force in his voice I had never heard before. It was amazing how quickly that preacher broke his trance and paid heed. He had heard the voice of a higher power, in this case a really pissed-off redneck. Daddy swooped us up and out the front door before we had time to think about what was happening. We didn’t even stop singing until we were almost down the steps into the churchyard.
We were glad to be out of there, and I at least was proud that Daddy had come to our rescue. But Daddy obviously felt terrible about it. On the way home in the car, he got to feeling especially bad. “Goddamn! I can’t believe I said Goddamn in church!” he muttered to himself. He finally got so upset he had to stop the car and get out in the woods and, in his way, ask God’s forgiveness.
I couldn’t help thinking how badly Mama had always wanted Daddy to walk down the church aisle and declare himself. Now he had certainly done that, although not I’m sure the way Mama had in mind.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“I always loved books. I don’t remember learning to read, it was just something I always did. I was hungry for knowledge, I guess, and information; I was a curious kid. I still am.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“Although I look like a drag queen's Christmas tree on the outside, I am at heart a simple country woman.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“One day I was standing with my stage manager, Sandy Prudden, and Buddy Sheffield watching as Kermit the Frog (with the help of the late Jim Henson) sweetly sang a song. Sandy was always a big joker. He sidled up to me and said, “Isn’t it amazing the way Kermit can sing like that with somebody’s hand up his ass.” Without missing a beat, I came back with, “Shoot, that ain’t nothin’. I did that for seven years on the ‘The Porter Wagoner Show.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“The storm turned out to be much worse even than our captain had imagined. Winds that must have been near hurricane force whipped the seas into a frenzy. The couple busied themselves with trying to handle the boat and keep it afloat, and I’m glad they did. But that left Sandy and me to fend for ourselves. Of the two of us, Sandy is the bigger sissy (he’s always more afraid he’s going to break a nail than I am). He had no idea what to do.
Soon it became clear to both of us what to do: hold on for dear life! Waves began washing over the rear deck, and I started to get really scared. It takes a lot for me to take my shoes off, but this is one time I decided I could forgo the five-inch heels. I took them off, and it wasn’t long before “my little slings,” as I always called them, got slung. They went overboard with a wave, and all I could do was watch them go.
The next wave almost got me. A wall of water came crashing over the boat, slapping it around like a toy. I slid across the deck, completely out of control. I felt a rush of cold water surround me as the sea swept me in. I managed to grab a railing and stay with the boat, but my whole body was dangling overboard. I could think of nothing but the shark stories the captain had told us earlier.
Just as I began to lose my grip, I became aware of Sandy making his way across the pitching deck, reaching his hand out for me He somehow got a hold of me and dragged me back onto the boat and into the little cabin. It felt good to be out of the water, but by all appearances, the sharks’ dinner had only been delayed. There seemed to be no way our little boat could ride out this storm. You never know how you’re going to respond to a situation like that until you’re actually in it. The way Sandy and I chose to deal with it is still a source of wonder to me.
We held a brief high-level discussion and unanimously decided that we were doomed. Sandy’s gutsy “They can kill us, but they won’t eat us” didn’t apply to sharks. Then we simply and calmly lay down on the little bunk, held hands, and waited to die. I thought to myself, “If this don’t beat all.” Here I am, a country girl from East Tennessee, about to die somewhere off the coast of Australia, side by side with a gay man from New York.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“The thing I will never forget was the talk he gave about faith. While the forgettable man handed out little red leatherette-bound New Testaments, “Searchlight” passed out key chains. They were not just any key chains. Each one had a little plastic ball on the end with a single mustard seed inside. The plastic globe magnified it, much like the odd man’s eyes. If you looked closely, you could read a Bible verse on a shred of paper next to the mustard seed. It said, “If ye have faith, even as much as a single seed of mustard, ye shall be able to move mountains.” I took that to heart. In my particular case it might have said, “Ye shall move from the mountains” or even “Ye shall grow mountains and parlay them into a huge career.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“I asked Carl to go to the event with me, and he agreed. We rented him a tuxedo, and he looked very handsome in it, if a little uncomfortable. The tuxedo was only the beginning of a miserable evening for Carl. Everywhere we went there were crowds of people, including photographers, and everybody made a big fuss over us.
Carl sat through the ceremony and patiently waited afterward while I shook hands and accepted congratulations from a throng of music-industry people. I thought he was really handsome in his tux, but you could tell by the look on his face it suited him like a sock on a rooster. He didn’t say much all evening long, but on the way home, he took off his tuxedo jacket and tie and then even his shirt. I’ll never forget the way he looked sitting there in the car with his suspenders across his bare chest.
Finally, he turned to me and said calmly, “Honey, I love you and I will support you in your career any way that I can. I know it’s a big part of you and you wouldn’t be the same person if you didn’t do it. But the limelight’s just not for me. I’ll be there at home waiting for you, but I am not going to any more of these wingdings.” He has been a wingdingless man of his word ever since.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“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,” I said with an emphatic point toward myself. He tried to look to one side, but I held his face firmly. He blushed and sputtered and finally said haltingly, “I love you.”
That must have been the crack in the dam. Once the top man had fallen, it was easier to teach the rest of the Partons to say “I love you.” Now it is something we all do freely.
It is still not something Carl does on a regular basis. But now and then, in a kind of sidewinding way, he will say it.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“People have often asked me how we girls managed any privacy in a house with so many boys and no private rooms. It was difficult. We used to bathe with a washcloth from a pan of water. We would first start with our necks and faces and wash down as far as possible. Then we would wash the road dust from our feet and wash up as far as possible. Later, when the boys were out of the room, we would wash “possible.”
It was these circumstances that led to a very embarrassing mishap that I have told very few people and would not relate here if it were not so funny. We had an outdoor bathroom, and there were times in the middle of the night when it was very inconvenient to dress and go out into the cold just to take a leak. For these times there was a little room, actually a closet, that had in it what was called a “slop jar” or “slop bucket.” It was actually an enameled pot with flared sides that was made to accommodate a woman squatting over it to do her business. The closet had no door as such, just a sort of curtain hung on a tight piece of wire. After dark when the fire had died down, it could afford some kind of privacy at least.
One night when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I had been out on a date and got home fairly late. Everybody was already in bed, and I didn’t want to wake them and alert Mama and Daddy to the hour of my homecoming. I was absolutely bustin’ to pee, so I fumbled my way through the dark until I found the curtain to the closet and stepped inside. I dropped my panties and hiked up my skirt and assumed the position over the slop jar. I was feeling relieved in a physical sense and quite grown-up and somewhat smug that I “pulled it off,” so to speak.
But suddenly, here in the middle of my little triumph, or more accurately here in the middle of my rump, came the cold nose of an unexpected intruder. A raccoon had gotten into the house, and unbeknownst to me, we were sharing the closet as well as a very intimate moment. When I felt that cold nose on my butt, I screamed bloody murder and literally peed all over myself.
Of course I woke the whole house with my unscheduled concert. Daddy grabbed the poker to fend off an intruder. Mama started praying. The little kids cried, and the big kids just ran around confused. When everybody found out what had happened, they all had a good laugh at my expense. Except, of course, the raccoon. Once the lights were turned on, he acted like any man caught in a compromising position with a lady and bolted for the door. I often think of that moment at times when I’m feeling “too big for my britches,” and it tends to have a humbling effect.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“I flapped open the lid of my cardboard guitar case and whipped out my old Martin. Mr. Killen seemed a little taken aback. I think he wasn’t sure whether I was going to play the guitar or brain him with it. He breathed a sigh of relief when I went into a song. Bill hustled his guitar out as fast as he could and joined in. I sang loud and strong with the security that comes with knowing that one way or another, it’ll be over soon.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“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, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“Young boys were dragged to church the same way I was. But since they were destined to become men, they were given more leeway. I suppose when they started growing pubic hair they were allowed to wander out of church before the service was over to take their places outside, as if training to be men. Much of their training apparently involved staring back into the church at us girls.
It was the custom after church for the boys and girls to do some limited socializing, flirting, and so on, while the women gossiped and the men smoked and spit. This flirtation, however, was limited by the distance the boy could get the girl to walk into the woods, and the girl’s own boundaries.
So there I sat, trying to be holy, praying for forgiveness for sins I couldn’t put my finger on, repenting for things I had put my finger on, and all the while being aware of the boys looking at me, the woods behind the church, and the possible combinations of all of these things. The devil and I certainly had one thing in common: We were both horny.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“Among the most prominent under-the-tree drinkers were a pair of characters named Red and Clarence. They were two of the biggest drinking carousers around, but when the spirit hit them, they could get very religious. Once Red had decided he had received the “gift of tongues,” a common practice in our Pentecostal church. He went to church a few times and would, on impulse, stand up and go into seemingly meaningless strings of syllables, to which the believers would respond with “Bless him, Lord.” The story is that one day Red and Clarence were downtown in a truck belonging to one of them, and Red looked out the window and was reading a sign, somewhat haltingly. “E-CON-O-MY-AU-TO-SUP-PLY, Economy Auto Supply,” Red sputtered, to which Clarence, assuming his friend had gone into “tongues,” quickly came back with, “Bless him, Lord.”
That story circulated through the ranks of the church membership and was the source of great laughter for a time around the Parton household. It became something of a running joke that would crop up whenever anybody said anything that could be mistaken for “tongues.” Sunday morning, getting ready for church, a brother would say, “Come tie my bow tie,” and some smart-aleck sibling would shout, “Bless him, Lord,” and the rest of us would join in, all pretending to be caught up in the spirit.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“Another thing we loved to do was to catch June bugs and tie them to a string. I'm sure it was more fun for us than the poor weighted-down June bugs, but we had a ball flying what we called our “’lectric kites." You tried to get a real good fat June bug with a lot of lifting power. Sometimes you could just fantasize about him being able to lift you right off the ground to where you could soar up among the clouds and look down at the trees and the fields. That kind of blissful thought would sometimes come to a sudden halt when your June bug would sacrifice his leg in the name of freedom and buzz off across the pasture. In the blink of an eye you could go from being a kind of daring Smoky Mountain astronaut to being just a kid with a bug leg hanging from a piece of thread. I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly thank all of those five-legged June bugs for those dreams, fleeting though they may have been.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“One of our favorite family stories tells about a preacher who stopped by one day while Daddy was hard at work. This particular preacher was never much of a help to anybody and seemed to show up only when he was out beatin' the bushes for money. Well, this snooty parson in his starched collar stopped by the fence while my daddy was sweating and groaning and trying to get a stump out of the ground, and he said, "Hello, Lee, this is a right nice place you and the Lord have here." Daddy wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve and said, "Yeah, well, you should have seen the som'bitch when the Lord had it by hisself."
I have often joked that we had "two rooms and a path, and running water, if you were willing to run to get it.”
― Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business