Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us.

We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut.

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.

It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.

I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown....To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three.

…all that goes under the name of science is not necessarily scientific, and that all that goes under the name of health-care will not necessarily care for your health.

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.

Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.

Neutrals and lukewarms do not make history.

Madame....gloatingly savored her words as earlier she had savored her pig's trotter.

It's often necessary to hit a second shot to really appreciate the first one.

I'm just upset that we've been distracted by so much noise and vulgarity when we could be trying to talk about how our country can get stronger.

Going after ISIS, it's beautiful, I like it.