Charley Pride Quotes

No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had.

When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out.

As far back as I can remember, the radio held a special fascination for me.

Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs.

I realize I was more of a curiosity to the older Nashville artists than the new ones.

After 14 months of military service, I had a wife, a child, half an apartment, no car, and no job.

I grew up not liking my father very much. I never saw him cry. But he must have. Everybody cries.

Johnny Duncan was one of the first opening acts I hired for my show, and he is the one who initiated me into astrology. I got hooked. It made a lot of sense to me.

I finally came to terms with manic depression and lithium. I've taken lithium regularly for the past few years and have had no further bouts with manic depression.

I might have become a minor celebrity but royalty checks were a long way off.

Flying was as necessary to my business as fiddles and footlights.

There only have been two people on this earth that I was nervous around: Chet Atkins and Mickey Mantle. It's because of the respect I have for them.

The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use.

I believe it is possible to tell what sign some people were born under by watching their eyes, watching how they walk, how they talk.

Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.

I loved Mississippi and do to this day. The rainbows that stretch from horizon to horizon after a summer rain are the most spectacular I have ever seen.

I began playing Branson during the 1992 season and was a little amazed. There were about 30 celebrity theatres there and more are being added all the time.

I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange.

How often does a guy who lives and breathes baseball meet a woman who loves the game and understands it as well as he?

The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.

A woman went so far as to hire private detectives to contact me to help bring her out of what she called a hypnotic trance.

A black man singing about a blond girl was potential trouble.

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.

Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.

I've seen people who have been coming to my shows for 25 years.

What qualifies me to tell people how to act or what to think? I'm Charley Pride, country singer. Period.

There were very few black people in Montana but we never felt out of place.

I'm not James Brown. I'm not Sam Cooke. I'm Charley Pride. I'm just me and that's what you got.

No one church has all the answers or the perfect map to the Promised Land, and I prefer to work out my own faith and my own convictions in the seclusion of my own mind.

Any entertainer who tells you that the adoration of fans is not a heady experience probably never had the experience.

Chet Atkins ... is probably the best guitar player who ever lived.

It was unlikely that anyone had ever heard a black person sing country music.

Besides good schools, a good airport, and the Cowboys, Dallas had golf courses, and golf was fast becoming an obsession with me.

It isn't reasonable to expect that everyone in the world is a country music fan. Not yet, anyway.

A fan will grab you and hug you and will not let go. When that happens, you wish it could be that way all over the world.

I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started.