I got into radio when I was eight, and I was one of the busiest child dramatic actors in America.

Talking money is crass; so I'm not going to tell you what I made last year.

But, in fairness to them, too, the popular song per se is really a pretty shallow medium to perform in.

I'm going to continue to talk to the people, because I do believe that if they get to know you and what you are as a human being, they can more appreciate what you are as a performer.

See, I never wrote arrangements for the band for Judy Garland; I did strictly special material, special lyrics, put together all of her medleys.

As Buddy Rich, for instance, broke into the business at the age of three, I think it was, on drums, so indeed did I break into the business at the age of four as a singer.

To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the commonplace.

I want to sing for the broadest possible audience.

Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.

Whenever I did a good performance, my Dad and my uncles, who were rabid movie fans, took me to the movies. There began my underlying love affair with film.

I would be a liar if I said it wouldn't be lovely and soothing - that's the word - to have a hit single or a hit album.

Maybe, if I had lied all those years ago, my life could have followed a very different path. But as it is I faithfully follow the long, long thread the Fates have woven for me.

Every woman should have a purse of her own.

She needs to make one phone call, and she wishes she could make it into her past. Into last year. Or two years ago.

She did not begin to tell real lies until Rosa was in hospital suffering that filthy rot that left her all eaten out inside, as light and fragile as a pine log infested with white ant

Love is a taste for prostitution. In fact, there is no noble pleasure that cannot be reduced to Prostitution.

Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.

The 'We Have Overcome' generation has run out of intellectual creativity but refuses to leave the political stage.

Someone once asked me what I want on my epitaph when I pass away. Just the words 'I tried.' That's what this game of life is all about. Trying. There's the tryers, the criers, and the liars.

Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong. (To Richard Nixon, on the Vietnam War)

Any marriage worth the name is no better than a series of beginnings - many of them abortive.