Know yourself -- and know your audience.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

I snapped my fingers all through it. Sometimes I set my own tempo during rehearsal by doing that.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

You can keep rummaging around until you find a song you like, but you can't predict whether it'll hit or not.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

When you do a show five days a week and one night a week, the way I was doing, you use up so much music every day that pretty soon you find yourself …

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

If you see me coming, better step aside. A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

You can't cheat the public for long.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

Sixteen Tons was written eight years before I recorded it.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

I tell you, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers!

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford