Loretta on her “rocky” relationship with her sister
5. “Crystal and I are sisters, and love runs thicker than water, and I think people are the ones that put the thoughts in other people’s heads. It was then my head or hers, either one.”
Loretta on making music
6. “Don’t come at me while I’m writing a song because I’m not myself. I’m the person that I’m writing about. You got to do that. You got to be the person to write it.”
7. “You got to know what you’re doing, and you got to work hard. You can’t put a record out and just say, ‘I’m a star,’ and that’s it. ‘Cuz that ain’t gonna make it.” – (News Tribune, 2009)
8. “I wasn’t the first woman in country music. I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about. The rest were afraid to.” – (Esquire, 2000)
9. “To write a song, I write about me a lot, you know? And, ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ I sat down on the back porch of the old home place and just looked up the hill and started—’ Well, I was born a coal miner’s daughter’—and I wrote the song. It’s like writing a poem and, you know, no big deal. When you’re hungry, you can find that you can do a lot of things that you didn’t know you could do.” – (Southern Living: Biscuits and Jams Podcast, 2021)
10. “People get lazy. When they get a hit out, they think every one they put out is going to be a hit. Most of the time it’s a one-record wonder. But you can’t work on one record. I had to have sense enough to know when I started writing and singing that I had to have more than just one record to work the rest of my life. So I kept writing hits. You can’t depend on somebody else writing them.” – (Time Magazine, 2016)
11. “Everybody told me I wasn’t saying my words right, but I wouldn’t listen to ’em. If I would’ve listened to ’em, I would’ve been doing [songs] just like them. And that wouldn’t have been different, would it? Hell, I got more sense than that. I might have been born in Butcher Holler at night, but not last night.” – (Billboard, 2020)
12. “I think people should be available to all the fans. They’re the ones making the living. When you think about it, why wouldn’t you be nice to them?” – (PBS News Hour, 2016)
13. “I think it’s a shame to let a type of music die. I don’t care what any kind of music it is. Rock, country, whatever. I think it’s a shame to let it die, and I’m here to start feeding it.” – (Vocal Point with Martina McBride, 2020)
14. “I never sang onstage until I was about 27 or 28 in 1960 or ’61. But I wouldn’t change that; it’s one of the reasons I worked so hard. If I hadn’t been as old as I was, I probably wouldn’t have been as determined. I had four kids in school, so I knew I had to make it or else.” – (Tinnitist, 2012)