Top 450 Dolly Parton Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “I just always knew I was going to be a star. I was always going to be rich so I could buy things for Mommy and Daddy, so that I could buy them a big house and we could have things.”

— Dolly Parton

402. “I’ve been very fortunate.”

— Dolly Parton

403. “I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.”

— Dolly Parton

404. “When you come from where I come from, if anyone in the family makes it out, the others kind of come with you.”

— Dolly Parton

405. “All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.”

— Dolly Parton

406. “I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song.”

— Dolly Parton

407. “I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.”

— Dolly Parton

408. “I write what I write, say what I say, ’cause I feel what I feel, and if I did it different, it would make me a liar! So I’d rather be an honest person than a good liar.”

— Dolly Parton

409. “I always loved that old song ‘Banks of the Ohio’ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.”

— Dolly Parton

410. “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

411. “A lot of people think I’m a comedian.”

— Dolly Parton

412. “It took me years to eat a lot of shellfish. I was probably 20 years old before I had even seen a shrimp cocktail. I like oysters, but fried.”

— Dolly Parton

413. “I sing as an actress. Whatever I’m singing about, I just become the story.”

— Dolly Parton

414. “My life has been very full.”

— Dolly Parton

415. “I’m pretty sure in my older years, I’ll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.”

— Dolly Parton

416. “I prefer my music. I’m more of a one-nighter kind of person than to do a squat-down job for three months or whatever.”

— Dolly Parton

417. “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

418. “You don’t need to buy expensive cosmetics; almost anything will do if you know how to apply it.”

— Dolly Parton

419. “I was very honored to get to be part of ‘American Idol.’”

— Dolly Parton

420. “My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.”

— Dolly Parton

421. “I have a tendency to be awfully big-hearted and it’s very hard for me to say no, even when I need to.”

— Dolly Parton

422. “If I’d married someone in show business, there’d be too much competition.”

— Dolly Parton

423. “I’m easy to look like, so there are lots and lots of Dolly look-alikes.”

— Dolly Parton

424. “I grew up around lots of men – my father, my brothers, my uncles – so I wasn’t intimidated by them.”

— Dolly Parton

425. “I’ve often said I don’t lose my temper as much as use it. I don’t do either unless I have to because I love peace and harmony, but when you step in my territory, I will call you on it.”

— Dolly Parton

426. “My husband and I had to raise five of my younger brothers and sisters. They lived with us. We sent them to school.”

— Dolly Parton

427. “I believe in my cosmetics line. There are plenty of charities for the homeless. Isn’t it time someone helped the homely?”

— Dolly Parton

428. “I do write a lot of children’s songs, and I’m going to do a children’s television show, which also means I’ll be doing a lot of albums. So I do hope my future will hold a lot of things for children.”

— Dolly Parton

429. “Sevier County is a great area.”

— Dolly Parton

430. “My best country record only sold 200,000 copies. I didn’t have enough money for the band and the arrangements and the costumes and all. I had to move into wider fields.”

— Dolly Parton

431. “I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.”

— Dolly Parton

432. “I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.”

— Dolly Parton

433. “I can’t keep somebody from being a star, and I can’t make somebody a star, and nobody can.”

— Dolly Parton

434. “I think of country radio like a great lover: you were nice to me, you gave me a lot of cool stuff, and then you dumped my ass for another woman.”

— Dolly Parton

435. “We can’t just hope for a brighter day, we have to work for a brighter day. Love too often gets buried in a world of hurt and fear. And we have to work to dig it out so we can share it with our family, our friends, and our neighbors.”

— Dolly Parton

436. “There’s a lot of rednecks in the country where I grew up.”

— Dolly Parton

437. “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

438. “Don’t ever be late. It’s like proclaiming that your time is more important than someone else’s.”

— Dolly Parton

439. “When a girl didn’t have anyone to stand up for her, that girl had to stand up for her own damn self.”

— Dolly Parton

440. “I strengthen the muscles around my heart, but I can’t harden it.”

— Dolly Parton

441. “I look back on all that now, and I realize this helped to build my character. It helped me build my own strength. So even the bad times were good. There were good times as well as bad times. But that’s how memories are made, and that’s why I’m sitting here today.”

— Dolly Parton

442. “It’s like a battery that has to have a positive and a negative. One doesn’t work without the other. You’ve gotta have the good and the bad in order to know what’s right, and in order to know what’s real and what ain’t.”

— Dolly Parton

443. “Because books, my friends, are true magic bound between two covers.”

— Dolly Parton

444. “Is it easy? She sang to herself. No it ain’t can I fix it? No I can’t.”

— Dolly Parton

445. “She’d kept too many secrets and abandoned too many people, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.”

— Dolly Parton

446. “Be whatever your dreams and your luck will let you be.”

— Dolly Parton

447. “Ruthanna said, her interest piqued. Maya shook her head.”

— Dolly Parton

448. “Fate granted some people their wildest, greatest wishes while leaving the simplest pleas of others unanswered.”

— Dolly Parton

449. “Sometimes you could see the scars and sometimes you couldn’t. But everybody had them.”

— Dolly Parton

450. “She cared so much about her words, her creative expression, when what mattered to everyone else was the bottom line. Everything was a business – even art. She’d written the songs, but she wouldn’t be able to truly own them. Not if she wanted the rest of the world to hear them.”

— Dolly Parton