Quotes by Tom Hall

• It used to be that you'd have a song recorded by a major country artist and if it was a hit, you could buy a car. Now you can buy a dealership.
• My best album is called In Search Of A Song. That was my best shot right there. My finest hour, as they say. I could listen to the whole thing all the way through. There's nothing really crammed into it.
• My theory is if you have a religion, it's a good one. Because some people don't have any at all.
• People think because you're private, you have something you don't want them to know.
• Religion is a strange, wonderful thing. More crimes have been committed in the name of righteousness than any other notion.
• The first time with artistic endeavors is, if it's working, it was your idea, and if it's not, it's somebody else's idea.
• If Barbara Walters was interviewing me, I'd figure her career was as dead as mine!
• The first guy who came up with the concept of religion was sitting out under a tree. I'm sure of that.
• This generation should entertain this generation. It's only fair. When I was a kid, I mowed the lawn. Now, somebody else's kid can mow the lawn.
• When you retire, it's a place in life, a part of the journey. You just don't quit work; you develop an attitude where you can do what you please.
• Whiskey's to tough, Champagne costs too much, Vodka puts my mouth in gear. I hope this refrain, Will help me explain, As a matter of fact, I like beer.
• Young kids are doing the same thing I did, but they're doing it differently. They don't do brain surgery the way they used to do it either.
• The best compliment I ever had is, one day I was in Nashville, some disc jockey said, Hey, that sounds like a Tom T. Hall song. Up until then there hadn't been any such thing.
• I have my own religion. I'm sort of one-quarter Baptist, one-quarter Catholic, one-quarter Jewish.
• The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.
• After I retired and came off the road, I gathered up all my musical instruments and suddenly, I wanted them all to be perfect.
• Faulkner was almost oriental. I never got into Faulkner.
• I am a fan of history.
• I'm a very comfortable and happy-go-lucky old man. I never wanted to be great, because I'd just get worried.
• I have had hundreds of people work for me over the years, and I don't think I ever fired anybody.
• I love winners when they cry, losers when they try.
• I never fixed a story. I didn't make judgments, I let the listener make judgments. When I got to the end of the story, if it had a moral, I let the listener find it.
• I never hid out. I was never big enough a star.
• I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.
• I was quite a reader before I became a writer.
• I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.
• I had the notion that I wanted to write the great dirty American novel, so I went to Roanoke College on the GI Bill.