My father taught me to read music and play the piano-but not well, even though people have said that I'm a natural musician

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

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.

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

In the biological sense, race does not exist.

It is more important to prove something to yourself than to prove it to others!

Victimizers of children are the enemies of any so-called society.

Few things are as bad as a guilty conscience.

No man is worth your tears, but once you find one that is, he won't make you cry.

Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.

Silence augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage

They [the Reagan Administration] want to put street criminals in jail to make life safer for the business criminals. They're against street crime, providing that street isn't Wall Street.

She was only a prostitute, but she had the nicest face I ever came across.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.