When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.

It's amazing to hear, as a voice matures and then starts to decline, what kind of emotion is still conveyed by a really good vocalist.

When you're doing the traditional musicals, singing songs that are 40 and 50 years old, you realize there's a reason why those musicals are hits. These are amazing songs!

I'm facing upstage, with my back to the audience, and the spotlight comes up on my back as I start singing.

As I've gone along, I felt like I was discovering an aspect of my voice that I didn't know was there: an ability to interpret a song in a way that makes it more accessible.

The country experience was more of a departure. When you consider my education and my upbringing, you can see that was more of country rock outgrowth of my popular music aspirations.

I sang opera, I sang show tunes. I got into a rock band for a while. I've sung a lot of different things.

I have no experience performing that music live in front of an audience. So that remains to be seen. I'm very excited to see what that's going to be like.

I think now I'm being taken a little more seriously. That's pure conjecture on my part.

I've made it clear to my agents that I want more interesting stuff.

I did I Love My Wife on Broadway in 1978, and then went into television land. Now things are starting to come together in the way I thought they might when I was a kid.

As long as you write, you'll never be lonely.

A proper home can provide the bridge across that terrible gulf between poverty and a better future.

Yes, Yes Yall, You know we talkin it all see how we bringing the street corner to Cargenie hall

But, you know, all good rock is easy.

Who are you in the silence between your thoughts?

The entire art system urgently needs a vacation.

Those days [of the Vietnam War] you couldn't get on a bus going to the South without expecting a riot over something or the other. All of that has disappeared thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

There is no god, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man.

Critical thinking is what leads to the next breakthroughs in any area.

When we label anyone 'bad', we will have more trouble dealing with him than if we could have settled for a lesser label.