I wasn't driven. I just really loved what I did.

I've got a computer, but I won't go near it.

When rock came in, I wasn't bitter about it. I was puzzled.

I'll probably never put out another album because I'm a tough critic of my work, and I don't think I could come up to those standards any more.

You knew after eight bars that you were hearing something just absolutely new and unique.

I had a very unusual contract. Most artists actually pay for their record dates and it comes out of their royalties. I paid for nothing.

I had four or five years in school training as a soprano. I fell into pop singing because of economics. I got out of high school and had to go work, and they weren't hiring opera singers.

Songwriting is an art unto itself, not to be confused with performing.

I wasn't driven. I just really loved what I did.

Songs suffer at the mercy of the performer.

I just learned my lyrics and tried not to bump into the trumpet player. That was my philosophy.

Whatever fame came did so not because I sought it.

There was never anything like it before in history. It was a different kind of joyous, happy screaming.

The world is a pile of grunge.

'The Sound of Music' is one of my favourite old musical films.

I've played American, Italian, Greek, French. I've been really lucky that way.

Waiter trainers claim that an investment in education pays off very quickly for restaurants.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by 'sophisticated' methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

People stopped hanging out with me at the point when I stopped doing drugs. All of a sudden they didn't wanna hang out with me anymore. And I would have hung out with them. I mean they were killing themselves, but I still would have hung out with them.

People will go into an audition and a casting situation, and they'll see someone across the room that's perhaps slightly famous, or famous, and they think, 'Oh God, I'm not gonna get the part.'

When I started writing 'Luck in the Shadows,' I just wanted to create an adventure story.

The two great aims of industrialism - replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy - seem close to fulfillment.

Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling.

I am not an educated man. I never had an opportunity to learn anything except how to fight.

Your email inbox is a bit like a Las Vegas roulette machine. You know, you just check it and check it, and every once in a while there's some juicy little tidbit of reward, like the three quarters that pop down on a one-armed bandit. And that keeps you coming back for more.

Obviously there are pieces of classical music that are some of the most beautiful music ever written for me anyway is a lot of classical or contemporary music so its a different kind of space that you enter when youre listening to it.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

For years, I have worked diligently to develop and implement a 21st century manufacturing strategy that will create jobs in the new clean energy economy.

All successful people learn that success is buried on the other side of frustration.

All I'm doing is I'm filling out my tax returns - or my accountants are, and I'm paying whatever I'm supposed to pay, though I'm giving away a large amount of the money and that probably lowers my tax rate because I'm giving away so much money. But change the law, but don't blame me for the law. I'm not writing the law. I didn't write the law.

Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world.

If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved and never will achieve its full potential that word would be meetings.

A tattoo is graffiti on the temple of the body.

I never thought about how I didn't have a cell phone or I'm in 2011. I was just so happy to be able to be a character in the 30s and there are these actresses that I really liked in the 40s, 50s and 60s in American movies that I've seen since I was a little girl. But you don't really think like that when you prepare for a role.

No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

I am not among those who engage in nostalgia, because I think that locks you into a moment in time without thinking about where you are, what needs to be done now.

I am passionate about football. My support for Celtic FC has got me through some hard times in my life. I still play regularly, too.

Understanding the true causes of the Depression, as well as the real economic record of the United States in the 1930s, is an essential ingredient in anyone's economic and historical education.