Richard Petty

A lot of them also looked a little further down the line in the future than we did. We always did everything out of Level Cross (N.C.) in the backyard and we were fairly successful with the thing. Then it started being a bigger and bigger business. It started going and bringing more people in, more money, more technology, that kind of stuff. We still sat there in the backyard. By the time we got ready to do something about it, we were so far behind on our money and our engineering and all that stuff it’s just taken us a little time to get going.

Denver’s pretty quick. They couldn’t keep up with him in the open field.

I didn’t miss out on a family life because of racing. I had one because of it.

Never put a question mark where God puts a Period.

There’s probably not a crew chief out there who hasn’t tried something that seemed like a good idea.

When I first started racing, my father said, “Win the race as slow as you can.

I don’t care how small the game. I want to win.

I get more people approaching me about how good I was in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ than being in Coldplay.

I think the way for me to win America’s heart is to perform, and if I really was concerned about breaking big then there’d be a tour.

Because if you do what you think is right for the benefit of everybody and everything and you make decisions, to go back and regret them afterwards-it’s a futile experience and it’s not worth thinking about. Because life just unfolds. Provided you do your best and you think you’re on the right track, you can only be right or wrong. But to regret it-I don’t think there are any huge errors or misdemeanors. You know, I should have hung out with Elvis a bit more.

I wanted my voice to be a tenor sax, really.

I don’t know how you explain Piers Morgan back to Americans now. I don’t think he ever intended for America to be his home, and there’s a difference between criticising the place you have come to call home and the place you have come to live in for a bit. Ideally, on the Venn diagram between myself and Piers there would be no overlap whatsoever, on either a personal or professional level. If we could be two non-interlocking circles I’d be fine with that. Any comparison with him makes me want to challenge you to a duel.

So many people try to grow up too fast, and it’s not fun! You should stay a kid as long as possible!

The mind is an erogenous zone.

Friends don’t lie.

I’ve really gotten into hip-hop again recently. I’m reliving my childhood. I’ve been listening to a lot of Wu-Tang Clan. I always wanted to be a rapper when I was younger. That’s always what I wanted to be before I started acting.

There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles. It was the day they built the second automobile.

There’s a lot of contemporary actresses I admire, but there’s practically no one who’s made a color movie whose career I’d want … I don’t feel very modern at all.

They always ask me the same questions. Where was I born? When did I start singing? Who have I worked with? I don’t understand why they can’t just talk to me without all that question bit.

I really love cursing a lot. But as I get older, I realize it’s a little unseemly for women of a certain age.

That’s when I realized that as long as you don’t broadcast your beefs, you can get away cold with murder. It’s even better if you don’t allow the beef to take place. If someone disrespects you, you can know in your heard that you’re going to get him, but you don’t have to show him there’s a beef. You can just look at it like, Okay, this nigga must not know. And then you fall back and you put it down.