I am so happy that I am alive and can walk.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

I sing the songs that people need to hear.

They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I'm still vulgar. I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I've got to do something.

I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.

Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.

It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.

It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them.

But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage.

At the same time I was being given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

The only time that I am really truly happy - when I feel at my best - is when I'm on the stage.

Johnny Guitar... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together.I would hear him sing every night.

I figured I could do It's A Man's Man's Man's World, because I believe it's the truth.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.

Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't.

That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.

And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.

My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!

I like to shop, but I don't like to go out to dances.

A few years ago, I thought, I'll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.

Bobby Womack is always very real, both with his music and as a person.

I'm not a braggart, but when I was a little girl people used to come from all over Hollywood to hear me sing.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

When I look out at the people and they look at me and they're smiling, then I know that I'm loved. That is the time when I have no worries, no problems.

When I'm performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I'm that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn't wait to be smokin' a cigarette, you know?

My mother always wanted me to be glamorous. When I thought about that, it really fired me up, and once I lost all those pounds, I started to feel really good about myself.

I am so happy that I am alive and can walk.

I don't care who's playing. Even if it's my favorite artist, I'm probably not gonna go and see him.

What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.

It feels so good to be happy.

Johnny Guitar... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together. I would hear him sing every night.

The specifics of Cathy's and my life are different now, but the basic life challenges are exactly the same.

Happiness is making your dreams come true.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

If you want to cure the world, don’t emanate fear, emanate love.

The United States has never been afraid of a challenge. In times of crisis, it is American innovation and ingenuity that has forged the path to progress and prosperity.

Young people who have no future will easily give up their future, which they can't see on the horizon.

How can you respect a culture if the woman has to walk several steps behind her man, has to stay in the kitchen and keep her mouth shut?

If you are a good writer - and I think I am - you are able to handle any kind of group and imagine their lives.

Without action, we are going to continue to allow Iran to be a safe harbor for terrorists, see its economy further deteriorate, and see the Middle East further destabilize.

The nature of a democracy consists to an important degree in the right of the people to criticize problems and mistakes.

The music I do is food... that will be your dinner.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

I met Leonardo DiCaprio and Busta Rhymes the same night, on my birthday in New York.

The study of geography is about more than just memorizing places on a map. Its about understanding the complexity of our world appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across continents. And in the end its about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together.

Manners are nothing more than thinking about somebody else.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.