But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.

Well, you know, it's been interesting because an album is just a snapshot of where you are at that time. Not all pictures of everybody are just in jeans and a 'T' shirt, or a ball gown. You have many different sides and this is a snapshot of where you are at that time.

The album is a definite departure. I haven't written original material before, except for one song on my first album, but Elvis and I did six songs together on this one.

There were some things that I found I really enjoyed singing about; like, on the title track, there's this film-noir character of a woman who's sort of losing it in a room.

I love music so much I love what I do. I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

Sometimes I can't get out of the character because the story is very intense.

It was probably when I met Jeff Hamilton, the drummer I've been working with for the last 20 years. He's the one who brought Ray Brown to hear me sing at a restaurant in my hometown.

I like to interpret 'Call me a River', as if I'm saying, 'Now you're telling me you love me after all that, and I'm telling you to shove off.' That's my interpretation. But I would never 'say' that because somebody else might interpret the song in another way.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

I'm not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I'd rather be figured out.

I think that I was being much more uptight about those things before. I feel like I really don't have to prove anything at this point other than what I'm doing.

I mean, I don't think I would call Claus to do an album of big band tunes. You know, just like arrangers write for the artist they have in mind; you have to keep in mind if you're going to work with Claus Ogerman. You invite him to do what he does.

But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.

That's why these songs have lasted as long as they have because they're just about feelings that don't change. They are love songs, they are not specific, those kinds of feelings don't change.

You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal.

When you drive by Radio City and you see your name up there and it's only 'your' name. I just went 'ooh'. I thought this is really like looking at another person.

You're creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it's their experience, not yours. I'll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about 'my' broken heart.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.

We especially need imagination in science.

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

To them though, not to us, we were just a catalyst for their imagination.

In this drawing we just let our imagination run wild. We visualized Superman toys, games, and a radio show - that was before TV - and Superman movies. We even visualized Superman billboards. And it's all come true.

To put yourself in another's place requires real imagination, but by doing so each Girl Scout will be able to love among others happily.

If you use your imagination, you can look at any actress and see her nude... I hope to make you use your imagination.

Toy Soldiers was my introduction to film. I certainly didn't think I was doing art by any stretch of the imagination.

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.

I mean, the most important thing to me is imagination.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.

Imagination allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, "Just watch!"

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.

In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

I like photographs which leave something to the imagination.

When it came to political power, blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights, and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.

My best investment is my imagination, because it has never failed to bring me my greatest returns!

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.