I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

There is spontaneity to my work.

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

Fear is exciting for me.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a ‚one size fits all‘ standard for happiness.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

When I was a young kid, I did not even dream about playing for my country. It was such a farfetched thing to play for India.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

I would honestly say that with all the awards and all the other things that I’ve done in my life, Dollywood is one of the greatest dreams that I’ve ever had come true – I am so proud of that I can’t even begin to tell you, Dollywood is real special to me.

But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares… if you don’t really work them.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

I don’t really know that much about love, it turns out.

I thought I would be a guy on the radio.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s an expression.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

You aren’t normal if you sing to people. You aren’t a normal person. It’s nerve-racking.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

My imagination is a twisted place.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.