See, I never wrote arrangements for the band for Judy Garland; I did strictly special material, special lyrics, put together all of her medleys.

Because obviously the whole purpose of putting records out is purely and simply to make money.

I would be a liar if I said it wouldn't be lovely and soothing - that's the word - to have a hit single or a hit album.

I want to sing for the broadest possible audience.

Talking money is crass; so I'm not going to tell you what I made last year.

See, I never wrote arrangements for the band for Judy Garland; I did strictly special material, special lyrics, put together all of her medleys.

As regards my feelings about drummers - there's Buddy Rich, and then there's everybody else.

As a singer, the biggest joy I have are the arrangements.

I didn't really have an act per se - a theatrical performance, as opposed to just: here I am, folks, and you're all supposed to be dead quiet while I sing eight or nine songs, then get off the stage.

Right now, my career is in three directions: as a performer, as an arranger, as an author - and I don't give any one of them true precedent, or true top marks, as opposed to the other two.

As Buddy Rich, for instance, broke into the business at the age of three, I think it was, on drums, so indeed did I break into the business at the age of four as a singer.

How many radio shows I did is lost to memory now; it's in the hundreds - maybe even close to being in the thousands - for the span of years from the time I was eight till I was about fifteen.

My initial career, really, as a baby, was as a singer.

Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.

I got into radio when I was eight, and I was one of the busiest child dramatic actors in America.

Buddy Rich is one of a kind; he's a genius, and that's all there is to it.

I was a singer professionally when I was four years old, and I did not really begin to play any instrument - the first one, of course, was drums - till I was about nine years old.

I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.

Whenever I did a good performance, my Dad and my uncles, who were rabid movie fans, took me to the movies. There began my underlying love affair with film.

But, in fairness to them, too, the popular song per se is really a pretty shallow medium to perform in.

There isn't a dearth of it, but I will confess that it's harder for me to find songs on which I'm willing to invest anything from ten to fifteen hours writing an arrangement than it was in times past.

It may sound a bit like an army barracks, but the truth of the matter is: there must be some time laid aside for arranging, time for working on either a book or an article - I've written two articles in the last four months for the New York Times book review section.

So I'm sorry, I'm going to continue to talk to the people, because I do believe that if they get to know you and what you are as a human being, they can more appreciate what you are as a performer.

To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the common place.

Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.

That's part of the curse: If you're gonna play the song, you better play it. I've tried to phone in 'Jeremy' a few times, and it's tough. It doesn't work.

If we don't record our own history on the Net, it will disappear.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

W. E. B Dubois used the NAACP platform for two decades to discredit the character, reputation, and fund-raising efforts of capitalist and Tuskegee University founder, Booker T. Washington.

I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

A man who is without capital, and who, by prohibitions upon banking, is practically forbidden to hire any, is in a condition elevated but one degree above that of a chattel slave. He may live; but he can live only as the servant of others; compelled to perform such labor, and to perform it at such prices, as they may see fit to dictate.

Donald and I still really wanted to be together, but I was fighting to keep what we had privately, and once the world gets involved in your life, little by little it breaks it down until you forget what it was in the first place.

I used all diligence to arrive at London and therefore I now gave my crew a certificate under my hand, of my free and willing return, without persuasion or force by any one or more of them.

Specifically in stand-up, I love jokes. I love short, structured ideas and a punchline.

I think professional sports, football, to use it as an example, it's fundamentally a form of entertainment.

We learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

I think by and large, humans prefer to think of themselves as minds from the neck up. We don't really like to think of ourselves as another animal, another digesting, excreting, mating, snoring, sleeping kind of sack of guts. I don't think we like that. I think we'd rather not be reminded of it.

The person whom you favoured with a loan, if he be a good man, will think himself in your debt after he has paid you.

To be a philanthropist, you don't have to be Nelson Mandela. You just have to look around you and ask, 'What little bit can I do? Whose life can I touch?'

During the early months of the war in 1914 there was a conflict of opinion between the War Office and the Foreign Office regarding news from the Front.

So, through playing with Cop I realized that there is a potentially interested audience out in the world.

My kids have been incredibly supportive of the work that I do. They understand why it matters.

The bottom line is, there have been a lot of nuts elected to the United States Senate.

My personal style is relaxed.

Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description.

The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you're an artist or a journalist is to be engaged in the process at some level.