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?

Etta James

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Etta James

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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.

Etta James

I sing the songs that people need to hear.

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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!

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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?

Etta James

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.

Etta James

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

Etta James

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

Etta James

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.

Etta James

It feels so good to be happy.

Etta James

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Rob Walton

I remember going to church about four times a week. I liked it a lot.

Victoria Jackson

You get a heck of a sound from the church. Can't you hear it in my voice?

Muddy Waters

Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable groanings'.

Edith Stein

I think my election is one of several indications that gay and lesbian folk are being brought more into the center of things. I'd like to think that my election signals my bringing of gay and lesbian folk into the center of the church.

Gene Robinson

So, not only am I panicking over the weekend if I need to know my lines, but also if can I get the kids to the zoo. Can I even go to church? I was asking for certain things that would allow me to plan my life a little better.

Hunter Tylo

The more I do bookstores, the more people come up to me from church groups. I spoke at Pittsburg State College and had 2 or 3 ministers and book groups from a couple of churches.

Anita Diament

My father started me singing in church.

DeForest Kelley

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

Ulysses S. Grant

A lot of victims, for example, have become addicted to alcohol and drugs. It seems to me that the church's healing ministry is going to be enhanced through this in much broader strokes. That's good, it's all positive.

Roger Mahony

The intelligence investigation under the leadership of Senator Church, which I know has helped cause this investigation by you, points out that the agencies did not disclose certain facts to us and that certain plots were going on.

John Sherman Cooper

Yesterday I had a Shaker visitor, and today a Catholic; and the more I see and hear, the less do I care about church doctrines.

Maria Mitchell

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets.

William Laud

If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied.

Charles Hodge

Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.

Lynn Johnston

It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.

Sean Hannity

When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.

James Brown