Top 461 Willie Nelson Quotes & Sayings

I'd just gotten into Los Angeles from Texas, where I live, and the phone rang and it was the guy calling about the Willie Nelson video. I was totally excited about it.

A prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson bumper sticker washed ashore on the beach, which meant it was Florida. Then it got weird.

I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.

It must be very strange to live in the world of Willie Nelson or Bruce Springsteen or Pearl Jam. I don't know what kind of handle they have on their own loss of talent.

Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley - guys like that were huge influences.

I always loved Willie Nelson, but I loved the songs that Willie made famous.

Willie Nelson is a true champion. He pushed me to the limit where I had to figure out what punches to throw. But I put the pieces of the puzzle together and got the knockout, baby.

Willie Nelson, out there 200 days a year, calls his band family. And it is.

I knew that one movie could either kill my career or give birth to it. It's the same thing with Nelson. If you fail at Nelson [movie about nelson Mandela], you don't get to comeback and say, 'Well, I was trying. Let me do it again.' There are no re-takes.

Our father taught us how to play. He's also our biggest inspiration and he opened our ears to a lot of older music, like Richie Valens, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, and Fats Domino.

You'd hear Willie Nelson, then Earth, Wind & Fire, then Chicago, then Billy Joel on the same radio station. Nowadays, everything is compartmentalized.

The Michigan Republican primary apparently is tighter than Willie Nelson's headband.

Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.

Of course, Nelson Mandela, everybody knows Nelson Mandela. I mean, he's a great gift not only for Africa but for the whole world, actually. But do not expect everybody to be a Nelson Mandela.

Country music tends to be so sentimental and homespun, it's easy to stumble into self-parody, but Haggard has brought a freshness to the themes that places him alongside Hank Williams and Willie Nelson as one of the greatest country music writers.

If Detroit was a watershed concert for me, traveling with Willie Nelson through Texas and Louisiana was a milestone of a different sort.

I grew up with the Highwaymen, which was Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Mom and Dad rode rodeo, so country music was always in the house and the car. They threw in some Dolly Parton, too.

But it was great, we sit in the same dressing room where, like, Johnny Cash sat and Willie Nelson and all those guys. That was in itself something amazing - I was on the same space these guys stood on, ya know?

Steve Earle had a mainstream career. Dwight Yoakam had a mainstream career. Willie Nelson did. But they always made good music, they always stuck to who they were. They weren't relying on radio like a lot of people are in Nashville.

I am a music freak. My tastes run the gamut from Willie Nelson to Metallica to Miles Davis.

Willie Nelson is the perfect person, it seems to me, to think about. Because something tells me that he operates on his own frequency.

I think I, like most people, enjoy a wide variety of music. Yeah, I like some country stuff - old country stuff. I might not enjoy Billy Ray Cyrus or anything. But, you know, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, early Johnny Cash - absolutely.

Working with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson takes you up another level.

Willie Nelson is not just a star or a headliner, he's a legend.

Wandering around back stage at a willie Nelson concert is a bit like being the parrot on the shoulder of the guy who's running the Ferris wheel. It's not the best seat in the house, but you see enough lights, action, people, and confusion to make you wonder if anybody knows what the hell's going on. If you're sitting out front, of course, it all rolls along as smoothly as a German train schedule, but as Willie, like any great magician, would be the first to point out, the real show is never in the center ring. As Willie always says, Fortunately, we're not in control.

Favorite country singer of all time... Hank Williams... Well, then there's Willie Nelson. Can I have three? I can't do one. Then if I have three, I'll need five. Hank Williams for sure. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

Ever since Willie Nelson brought rednecks into an alliance with hippies back in the psychedelic '70s, Austin has milked its quirky libertarian spirit for a worldwide bonanza of free publicity.

Everybody when they saw it, they said, "Did Willie Nelson sign your hat?" I'd say, "No, that'd be Willie Knucklehead - Robertson, OK?" We were at an event for the fans and I took my hat off and set it down on the couch, and he signed it. I said, "What are you doing, idiot?" He said, "Look, I was in the zone, and you just happened to put your hat in my zone."

Willie Nelson's the one who told me the reason it costs so much to get divorced is because it's worth it.

My dad taught me to play the guitar. We grew up with country music. We had every Willie Nelson record (laughs). I was saved at a young age and had a great desire to follow God. I was really focused on that through my whole life, even as a kid and through high school.

Long before Wesley Snipes decided he didn't need to pay the IRS, Willie Nelson was dodging the tax men.

I laughed at Willie Nelson, wondering why he spends all his life on that tour bus. And I look at myself, and I'm sitting in airplanes half the time.

I looked at Willie Nelson and Farm Aid as a role model; they do it every year, and it draws people together, and drawing people together where they realize they're not alone, to me, is strategic in healing.

Farm Aid was started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews as a concert to support small local farms in the U.S.

You hear a Willie Nelson solo, he doesn't play real fast, but it's so melodic and beautiful. It's kind of, to be human is to have space and not show all your stuff all the time.

I've always said I've wanted to be around forever. I never wanted to be the latest, greatest thing. I want to be like Willie Nelson - touring when I'm 70. To do that, you can't be the latest, greatest thing because those things fizzle out.

If Willie Nelson had been Rosa Parks, there never would have been a civil rights movement in this country, because he refuses to leave the back of the bus.

If they keep playing us on country radio and we get to keep doing cool stuff like playing with Willie Nelson, that's great.

I've worked with some of the best of them. Not just directors like Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, but writers like Sam Shepard and singers like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.

I was terrified, terrified in Songwriter, because there I was, New York Jewish girl, singing country-western onstage with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson. I mean, forget it. I was so terrified.

Now, I know you expected me to say that, well, I just kick back in the rocking chair, fished a little bit, listened to Willie Nelson tapes and watched old baseball games on the Classic Sports network. And, tell you the truth, I have done that for maybe about five total minutes.

It was a free-for-all with music when I was growing up. My mother was a huge music fanatic so I was listening to everything from country to heavy metal to Indigo Girls to Elton John. I guess when I was really young I didn't like Willie Nelson, and she obviously loved him. Now I do too, I'm so thankful to her for playing his music nonstop.

I don't have a favorite song that I've written. But I do have a favorite song: 'Always on My Mind,' the Willie Nelson version. If I could sing it like he do, I would sing it every night. I like the story it tells.

My guitar, it was new when I got it, but it has a hole like Willie's where it's just worn out from my pinky going back and forth over the wood over all these years. I got Willie Nelson to sign that spot on my guitar. I'm a huge fan of him.

If you’re not crazy there’s something wrong with you. Willie Nelson

It's like Willie Nelson. You're an artist and you have different styles inside of you.

When I was really little, I listened to Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrel, Crystal Gayle, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, and Patsy Cline.

I love Willie Nelson's 'Phases And Stages'; there's so many songs from The Band and Bob Dylan that have gotten me through hard times, like 'Tears Of Rage.' I love Karen Dalton's 'In My Own Time' and Skip James.

In 2012, the city of Austin erected an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Willie Nelson in the heart of the business district. Schoolchildren, churchgoers, tourists, slackers, conventioneers, tech geeks - everybody, it seems - now congregate around this ponytailed shrine to outlaw country.

You might be a redneck if you have a picture of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, or Elvis over your fireplace.

Whenever I'd go anywhere with my dad - in his 1980 burgundy Dodge Ram - he'd always listen to mix tapes of country-music stars like Garth Brooks, Clint Black and Willie Nelson. Those were the first songs I ever learned the words to.

I was terrified, terrified in 'Songwriter,' because there I was, New York Jewish girl, singing country-western onstage with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson. I mean, forget it. I was so terrified.

What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? 'Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.' I think of that. No big deal. I've reached a stage in my life where I am content.

I'd like to team up with somebody like Willie Nelson or Ray Benson.

I've been a fan of old country music, like Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline. I think I'm drawn to it because of the sense of sadness and sort of loss that a lot of good old country music has.

You never hear a country-western station saying 'We have old school artist Willie Nelson in the house.' They say 'We have the legendary Willie Nelson.'

Michael Phelps and Willie Nelson are teaming up to do an album. ... They're covering The Doobie Brothers.

Oscar Charleston was the Willie Mays of his day. Nobody ever played center field better than Willie Mays. Suppose they had never given Willie a chance, and we said that, would anybody believe there was a kid in Alabama who was that good? Or there was a black guy in Atlanta who might break Babe Ruth's home run record? No.

I've dreamed of being on the road, traveling and touring, for as long as I've been into doing music. It's what I live for. I just wanna be Willie Nelson.

I love most 70's song writers, not so much outlaw, but really those 70's guys. I'm a big fan of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, those guys.