Marcia was incredibly organized, obsessively neat ... I mean she folded her underwear like origami.

If life can end in one minute - so damn quickly with no damn warning - you better do what you want to do now right this minute. Because your next minute might not happen.

Singers come and go; the music business waxes and wanes. The blues are popular and unpopular, often at the same time.

I never get used to it, the unknowable mystery of a person so suddenly, totally closed, snapped shut like a half-read novel.

Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but I'll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can't beat Yiddish.

Guilt is the major motivating force in my life.

Record company execs eat their young, I swear to God.

Probably the only thing my mom and dad agreed on was the vital importance of guilt.

I have no-fail chemistry. A guy turns me on, he's the wrong one for me.

True enlightenment is when you know that you’re nobody and that you are an interplay and display of perplexing energy.

No person can walk all alone because to walk all alone one must have no memories at all from the past!

The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man's failures.

It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them, and have the honesty to say to people, 'There are no easy solutions here.'

If I want to be alone, some place I can write, I can read, I can pray, I can cry, I can do whatever I want - I go to the bathroom.

The fact of the matter is that many children see. . . . Most of those who see are considered to be oddballs and every effort is made to correct them.

Not to mention the CIA which should be, I think, dissolved, it's of no use - a great source of mischief - I don't see any point to the FBI.

The thing about hearing loss is that no one can see it. Most people are so impatient; they just assume that the person with hearing loss is being rude, or slow-witted.

Style advice? Always wear clothes... that are... clean, for starters. An added bonus if it is pressed as well. Unless you are wearing clothes that are supposed to look rumpled.

Because the show is popular, people do recognize us on the streets.