It may be that my most helpful contributions to music aren't my compact discs but my articles about other great singers of the past for American Heritage magazine.

Thank God for beautiful songs about feeling despair when you yourself are in despair. They really get us through.

Please believe that I do this because I am convinced that my illness cannot be helped for any length of time and I cannot bear to be a burden on anyone any longer.

I have complete artistic control, and I just do my best album every time and trust it to fate.

When I dance, I love the romance and sexiness of it, and love having it be clear to both dancers that the man leads! But the man has to know what he's doing!

Somebody called me a 'bruised romantic' once, and I like that.

If I love a song I hope to find a way to get other people to love it too.

I had no desire to become a singer until I heard Billie Holiday. The first time I heard her on a record, it was a revelation. She sounded like a woman singing about herself.

I'm very happy to have a small, long, career instead of one big hit and then oblivion.

If you sing honestly and sincerely to kids, they will respond with all their hearts.

Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.

Good men do the most harm.

Alas! we must suffer ourselves before we can feel for others.

I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry.

LOVE WHAT YOU DO! Whatever that is, put your entire heart & soul into it, or don't do it at all.

The Socialists can scheme their schemes and the Liberals can dream their dreams, but we, at least, have work to do.

Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.

He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.

Jackson has devised a game called "Real or Not Real" to help Peeta. He mentions something he thinks happened, and they tell him if it's true or imagined, usually followed by a brief explanation.

I think if you're gonna run your mouth at somebody and they call you out on it - that's it!