Whenever you think that you are getting too big for the people around you, remember all that separates you from the guy sitting next to you is a little piece of gristle in your throat.

You have to know exactly what you want out of your career. If you want to be a star, you don't bother with other things.

You go beyond 'I want it. I want to have it' - to - 'I'm going to have it

My real achievement is my daughter and my three beautiful grandchildren.

Americans can pretty much sing anything, whereas foreign singers are often limited in style, language, even composer.

I think I'm making a difference for a lot of young singers.

Ninety percent of what's wrong with singers today is that they don't breathe right.

I must absorb everything while I'm still singing and step onto the stages of my many homes, and look out at the familiar surroundings, at the people who have come to hear me, to hear music.

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

Sometimes, the only way to get justice is to take it for yourself.

Civilized beings regard the act of intercourse as the highest expression of romantic love. One need only observe the behavior of animals, however, to realize that the act is often a form of violence.

If you have been sunned through and through like an apricot on a wall from your earliest days you are oversensitive to any withdrawal of heat.

Our dreams drench us in sense, and sense steeps us again in dreams.

I would like to see more successful business people run for office.

I'd forgotten how challenging comics can be until I started working on Ropes. Yes, you're restricted by the boundaries of the page, but we all work within technical limitations of some kind.

That's what music is: entertainment. The more you put yourself into it, the more of you comes out in it.

When I was a teenager I decided I was going to be a writer and that nothing was going to stop me. It sounds almost villainous. But I knew that was what I wanted.

From day one, I have always been open about my sexual orientation.