I was not a trained actor.

I think todays music absolutely stinks. I really do mean that.

Well, we all age, but Id been taking herbal supplements for a long time.

Any chance I had to get in front of people - amateur talent contests at movie houses like the Broadway, the president - I took.

Kids know me from their Grease DVD, so they instantly respond. You can hear a pin drop when I do my old songs.

Yes, but I don't think of the Teen Angel as of an age.

I've been around two years shy of 50 years doing what I do. I am a musician.

They weren't great pictures, but they were fun, and they really represented that period of time well.

When I started to play trumpet I was fortunate to learn very quickly.

I wound up signing to RCA Victor as a trumpeter, guesting on shows like Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners.

Push until you can push no more, and then, push some more.

It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money.

What we most regret are not the errors we make, but the things we didnt do.

My mother [was in advertising and] worked incredibly hard when she was bringing us up. She was a working mother and a working single parent.

There are a lot of women like me in the world, and we rarely get to see ourselves.

You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.

Yes, I very much like to have a personal stake in what I’m writing about.

So there you have it, a lifetime of first smelling the books, they all smell wonderful, reading the books, loving the books, and remembering the books.

I shared guitars before I actually got one of my own and played a guy's Silver tone and played another guys Danelectro 12 string and it was at about age 17 that I actually started playing.

Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.