I got the chance to speak to Dolly Parton, and she was full of great life lessons. These are my favorites.

As news of Parton’s death reverberated around the world, one clip that quickly began circulating on social media was her 1978 interview with Barbara Walters.

During their sit-down, the journalist told Parton, “You don’t have to look like this. You’re very beautiful. You don’t have to wear the blonde wigs, the extreme clothes, right?”

“It’s certainly a choice,” Parton replied. “I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable; that’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”

That interview was nearly 50 years ago, and yet it feels more relevant than ever in a time when it seems the algorithm is making us all look, dress, and talk the same. Parton didn’t care about trends. She loved sparkles, so she wore them. She loved big hair, so she teased it. And she loved her makeup so much, she wore it to bed.

Parton told me she wasn’t one to buy trendy or expensive products. She just used what worked best for her.

“I don’t think you have to pay a ton of money to have good products,” she said. “Most of the products that cost less are just as good, and sometimes better, as the ones that cost a fortune. I don’t buy for fame; I just buy the ones that work for me.”

One of my favorite fun facts to share with people is that Parton wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on the same night. Can you imagine? Most of us can barely make dinner after work, and here Parton is, writing two of the most important songs in America’s discography within hours of each other!

There was no big secret to her productivity, no fancy optimization hacks. Parton realized when she got her best work done and stuck to it — even if that meant waking up at 3 a.m.

“I don’t require as much sleep as a lot of other people do,” she told me. “That’s kind of a Parton family trait.”

I probably won’t try to write my next article before dawn. But next time I feel creatively stuck, I’ll take note of that fateful night when Parton’s pen struck gold twice.

“When I wrote those songs… I remember just sitting in the corner of this couch by this fireplace that was in the first house that Carl and I ever owned,” she told me. “I just remember the den having so much atmosphere to write. There was something about that fireplace, the coziness, and that corner — the one corner of the couch where I was always sitting with my feet up, writing and singing my songs.”

Parton and her husband, Carl Dean, were married for nearly 59 years before Dean died in March 2025, yet there are almost no public pictures of them together. Dean didn’t like the spotlight; Parton loved it. They never pressured each other to change.

When the couple could spend time together at home, Parton was usually cooking up a storm. She once excitedly described to me all the things that she loved to make for Dean: French toast with bacon, biscuits and gravy, cornbread and pinto beans, fried chicken and coleslaw.

“I just cook whatever comes to mind and whatever I’m in the mood for,” she added. “I can cook any of it!”

If they were going out to eat, Parton said she and Dean would get into “that little camper of ours” and make their way to a drive-thru (Taco Bell was a favorite).

“Oh, I love to get a good burger out on the highway and french fries like everybody else,” she said. “There’s some really good fast-food restaurants. And we go get hot doughnuts now and then. It depends what we’re in the mood for, whether it’s tacos or burgers or whatever — we can go get it!”

My interviews with Parton mostly focused on food, and one recipe I had always wanted to ask her about — but always ran out of time — was her mother’s stone soup.

In her 1994 memoir, “Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business,” Parton revealed that her mother would always make stone soup for dinner if someone in the family was feeling down. Parton and her 11 siblings knew that if stone soup was on the menu, they had to go outside and pick a special pebble.

The pebble that Parton’s mom dropped inside the soup was always from the child who needed an extra few sips of love that day.

“I can remember the feeling of having my stone picked to go in the soup,” Parton wrote in her memoir. “There was magic in those stones and a lot of wisdom in that mother.”

As I read all the tributes that referenced Parton’s lifetime of philanthropy — the Imagination Library, the LGBTQ+ advocacy, the medical research, the disaster relief — I kept thinking about that soup.

When Parton found fame, she had all the pebbles in the world. It was her turn to make stone soup.

Parton was always quick with a joke, even when it meant making fun of herself. One of my favorite moments from our interviews was when I asked if she had any fashion regrets.

“Oh hell yeah, there’s a bunch of them!” she exclaimed. “When I’m going through pictures for books or whatever, I literally laugh out loud and I think, ‘Oh my Lord, you must have thought you looked good.’ And I must have, or I wouldn’t have worn it! But now it’s like, ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy.'”

Parton was an icon, but she never took herself too seriously. I’m going to remember her words the next time I cringe at pictures of myself from 2012.

During our last interview together, I asked Parton to share her thoughts on aging in Hollywood, and she promptly responded: “Dollywood and Hollywood are two different places.”

“Of course, everyone would like to stay 35 forever, and in my mind, I kind of do,” she added with a laugh. “But I can’t get caught up in that trap of thinking I’ve got to do this or that. The way I live and the way I work, and the way I feel, I’m going to make every moment count.”

“I may live to be 100, or I may die tomorrow,” she continued. “But whenever that is, I will know I died trying, and I will know I’ve done everything I could to make the most of everything that I could.”

Talk about words to live by.

As I went through my interview notes, I saw all the questions I had compiled for Parton but never asked. Some were very silly — “What revenge dish would you make Jolene?” and “Please explain your crush on Jimmy Fallon” — others were more reflective. But they made me realize another life lesson.

Ask all the questions you can, while you still have the chance.