I never get used to it, the unknowable mystery of a person so suddenly, totally closed, snapped shut like a half-read novel.

If life can end in one minute - so damn quickly with no damn warning - you better do what you want to do now right this minute. Because your next minute might not happen.

Singers come and go; the music business waxes and wanes. The blues are popular and unpopular, often at the same time.

Marcia was incredibly organized, obsessively neat ... I mean she folded her underwear like origami.

Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but I'll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can't beat Yiddish.

Guilt is the major motivating force in my life.

Record company execs eat their young, I swear to God.

Probably the only thing my mom and dad agreed on was the vital importance of guilt.

I have no-fail chemistry. A guy turns me on, he's the wrong one for me.

Everyone has the power to inspire and serve the world.

It wasn't until I worked in the Perth Hospital kitchen in the 1970s that I began hearing stories about the ghosts that haunted their halls at night.

Move on. Life won't wait for you.

He was the first prime minister in a long time who did not have a son or a son-in-law in business or real estate

To recognize causes is to think, and through thought alone feelings become knowledge and are not lost, but become real and begin to mature.

When you believe in people, you motivate them and release their potential.

I’m a capitalist, not a corporatist. I’m not someone who believes we should be bailing out corporations whether their auto industries, or banks.

What incredible arrogance to believe that we limited human beings can destroy that which we cannot even begin to understand - much less create on our own - and that is earth and all of its glories.

Writing is only the frosting on my cake. Im whole without it.