Quotes from Carlene Carter

I like things all shined up and rocking with hooky pop choruses.

I fly from the seat of my pants, basically.

I hate parameters. They immediately alienate a bunch of people.

When I'm on stage, I know exactly where I am. It's not an ego thing or anything like that, but I am more in my body and aware of myself and aware of what I'm doing, and I feel more from that, from sharing the music.

Be yourself. And every person is unique.

I learned how to sing in front of a lot of people and to hone my skills alongside some of the greatest performers of all time.

You can have a big hit and not get rich.

There was a period where I was a little scared that I'd blown my chance.

I feel the audience are friends that have come to see us. That was always how we look on it in the Carter Family. I've never suffered stage fright.

I got into photography when my kids were little, and I continued talking pictures over the years.

I wood-shedded for a year to play Grandma's simple stuff. It's not that simple, and I don't use picks the way she does. But I played them as authentically as I could, with the flat-picking.

I wanted to play rocking country music, and when I started out in the late Seventies, it took me a couple of albums to figure out how to do that.

I always knew I would make the record that I made in 'Carter Girl.'

I do feel I'm responsible to carrying on the music. That's what I was charged with as a kid. When I was a little girl, I was told, 'When we are gone' - when you're a kid, you never think they'll ever be gone - 'you have to keep the music alive, the Carter Family songs, and add your own songs.'

It's all for a reason and all happened the way it was supposed to happen.

The first five albums I did, I tried a little bit of everything. I was trying not to conform at all.

I love to be surrounded by nature.

I was thinking about it: so many of my stories are about my family life, not about being related to a lot of famous people. That's my grandma, that's my mama, my daddy, my aunt, my uncle, my stepdaddy. I'd probably tell them even if they weren't well known.

If someone gets married at 15, they're either dumb or pregnant. I was both.

Everyone deals with loss. I'm no different, but we all find our ways of coming through things. Is it tough? Of course, but you find the strength to push on through.

I've always had wanderlust to try and do different things, but I always return to the music of the Carter family.

In the late '70s, I was falling into the middle lane. I was way too country to be rock, and way too rock to be a country act.

I believe everything falls into place as it's supposed to.

I'm really about my family and really proud of being a Carter.