At one time I smoked, but in 1959 I couldn't think of anything else to give up for Lent so I stopped - and I haven't had a cigarette since.

At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first.

I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me

I've never cooked. I can't do much more in the kitchen than make a cup of tea and some toast.

Any audience that gets a laugh out of me gets it while I'm facing them

There's such a thing as theater discipline. One player doesn't appropriate another's inventions

Broadway has been very good to me. But then, I've been very good to broadway.

I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them.

I can hold a note as long as the Chase National Bank.

I wouldn't change one thing about my professional life, and I make it a point not to dwell on my mistakes

When you are in deep conflict about something, sometimes the most trivial thing can tip the scales.

It don't do you no nevermind to tell nobody nothing.

To see anything other than ‘as it is’ - that is called the world.

What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?

You're gone and you left me. My heart has dissipated. The only thing I can feel is the blood rushing through my veins and the strings that hold my fragile heart together.

Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.

We have to do commerce differently because the WalMart system of big box chain retail will soon die. This means rebuilding local main street economies (networks of local economic interdependency).

You can’t change the music of your soul.

I went to the doctor last week. I said: 'Can I have some sleeping pills for the wife?' He said: 'Why?' I said: 'She's woke up.

It was a counter-attack and I had to take him down. I don't regret it and I would do it again if I had to.

It has always seemed to me that Barack Obama has studied intensely and learned a great deal from Lincoln.