Safe to say that no one has name-dropped the Dali Lama in a country song like you do in your new single “Better Get to Livin’”?
It is safe to say. People are always calling me the Dolly Lama or the DollyMama ‘cause they come to me for advice all the time, like I’m supposed toknow something. But I assume if you’ve lived long enough some people assume you should know something. I always say, “What do you think Iam, The Dali Lama? That line came across my mind when I was writing thesong and I thought, “Hey that’s good, I like that. That’s perfect.”

You’ve been working on a musical of your life as well as screenplay for a biographic movie. Is it hard to think of someone trying to portray you?
Well, not really. I think if I get the music right and I get all that emotion in there when I write the story, I think I will find that perfect person to do that. We’ll just get ‘em a big wig and a big push up bra.

Any ideas at this point?
Not at this point, I really don’t. I’ve had different people say that Reese Witherspoon would be great. And she would—she’s a pretty little thing but we’d have to really get her a boob job. She’s little like me but I don’t know if she could wave those kind of boobs around.

You were inducted into the Kennedy Center last year. Given all your other awards, how much did that mean to you?
For me, more than anything, it’s been the journey and the adventure. I do have to say, that all of those awards make you feel important, especially a country girl born in Tennessee that gets to be that high up to be up there with the elite so to speak. I like to say I went from the outhouse to The White House, so that’s pretty good.

Twenty-five RIAA certified gold and platinum albums. Twenty-four #1 songs on the Billboard country charts. Forty-one Top Ten Country Albums. Seven Grammy Awards along with 44 nominations. Given you’ve accomplished so much, what continues to drive you?
I love what I do. I will never retire, never even crossed my mind. I hope to work if I can keep my health until I fall dead on stage at 100 or so. Hopefully I’m going to have my own children’s show someday, my own children’s CDs and DVDs and I want a cosmetic line later on. It’s like I said, I wake up everyday excited about something else. Every time I think of one thing it makes me think of something else and through God all things are possible.

The Dollywood Foundation, created in 1998, funds Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library which gives kids a book a month until they reach kindergarten. You’ve expanded to 800 communities in 41 states and gave away five million books in 2007. What’s next?
We are excited about it and we’re going to England to start our first Imagination Library in Europe. We started the one in Canada last year. It’s a wonderful thing for children and its all children of the age group. A lot of people say, “Oh it’s just for poor children.” No, it’s for all children ‘cause it’s important to learn to read and learn to love books.

How important is humor in life?
It is a must in my life. And the way that I grew up, that is one of the things in my family—on my dad’s side and my mother’s people—they all had a great sense of humor. And most poor country people do. And I think a whole lot of that is to help them rise above some of that stuff that ain’t the least bit funny. If it ain’t the least bit funny but if you can find humor in it, it can lift you up and lift you out of situations where you might be so depressed you could die.

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