Richard Petty

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

NASCAR will make this decision strictly on the greenery, OK? They’ve got no loyalty to one place or another place [as if North Wilkesboro, Rockingham and Darlington need reminding]. They’ve got loyalty to money. And I don’t blame them. I’d do the same thing.

If there are 10 people there, two or three are going to recognize you.

A rivalry doesn’t happen in one or two races or in one year. It happens over a period of time to really get a rivalry going. We race together three or four races and get to beating on each other, that’s not a rivalry, that’s just a happening. You do that four or fives years, that’s a rivalry.

“Success in life is knowing the difference between ham and eggs; the chicken’s involved, the pig is committed.”

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

At least when the race starts he knows where they’re all at, ’cause they’re in front of him. Better to do it today than tomorrow.

For our first date, I made Ryan Hamburger Helper, which is basically what I grew up on. I make my own version of it now, with macaroni and cheese and hamburger meat. And the kids – it’s their favorite dinner.

Diamonds never leave you… men do!

A lot of times we talk about the politics of it, the unfairness of it, which is all true, but I think it’s clearer to people when you go, ‘Hey, that hurts my feelings.’

To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.

When people come out of rehab, they usually go to secondary rehab for another six months and then enter back into society gradually. But I came out and did Top Of The Pops straight away!

I believe I could do dance on ice, or play in a musical of Freud’s life called ‘It’s Your Mother’ – or maybe one for the symbolists: ‘Jung at Heart’. There’s always the one about India: ‘The Gandhi Man Can’.

Parisian men make love all day and have no time to work; American men work all day and have no time for love.

Do the NBC bigheads really pay attention to these message boards? Um, I don’t know if they read the message boards. I hope so, because I write fifty to a thousand fake posts a week, mostly, uh, saying that I’m really good and that no else is as good as me. So, I hope they listen to that because I’m trying to get a raise.

I’ve still got a twinkle in me.

[on the harsh standards placed on women by Hollywood] It’s one of those endless competitions, but it’s like running a race toward nothing. “There’s no winning. You’re never going to win the thin race. You’re never going to win the pretty race. You’re never going to win the smart race. You’re never going to win the funny race. I just want to be the best version of myself I can be.

[being naked in his new role in Little Ashes] In a lot of ways, I was kind of crossing lines of what I thought I was comfortable doing. I had to do all this naked stuff.

I do think things were meant to happen. I’m just this little girl from Tennessee, and here I am today. I think a lot of things are just out of your hands.

I feel like I represent normalcy in some way.

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.