- Highway Patrolman: [finds Marlene in the trunk of the car] Get out of there! It's against the law to ride in the trunk in this state. I don't suppose you've got any I.D., either?
- Marlene: Idee? Idee 'bout what?
- Red Stovall: What's a girl like you going to do in Nashville? Have you any money or friends? What are you gonna do, live in the streets?
- Marlene: The Lord will provide.
- Red Stovall: He'd better provide you a way of gettin' there, too.
- Whit: Uncle Red, don't you think you have a problem with your drinking?
- Red Stovall: Only when I can't get it.
- Whit: I mean - don't you think you might need some help with your drinking?
- Red Stovall: No, I do quite well all by myself.
- Red Stovall: Mary was right to go back to her husband. What the hell did I have to offer a kid? Just honky-tonks and flop-houses. That's the life of a country singer, Hoss. Sound good to you?
- Whit: It don't sound too hot when you put it like that, but it sure beats picking cotton and living in a sharecropper's shack.
- Henry Axle: You don't think he should be doing this, do you?
- Whit: Do you? Knowing it might kill him?
- Henry Axle: Want me to level with you, pal? He's going to die anyway, and he knows it. And he knows that this is his last chance.
- Whit: Last chance? For what?
- Henry Axle: To be somebody. Did you ever feel like you wanted to be somebody? If he makes these recordings - who knows?
- Red Stovall: What's so damned funny? That was my new shirt.
- Grandpa: [laughs] When you was climbing that ladder, that bull's horn missed your asshole so far!