Too often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it's too late.

I've got my whole life. There's a lifetime of experience, a lifetime of experiencing the road and the music and different players. It makes me a richer human being. I have a greater source of information to tap into, a wealth of life.

My grandmother passed at 104. She sang and wrote songs until she passed.

I wanted to make a jazz record. I didn't want it to be a standards record.

Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I've talked to like the record.

The month of September is Women in Jazz, so I'm doing jazz there in September. I'm in for the duration.

If I'm driving to L.A. and have anxiety about making the drive, if I've got Peggy with me, we're cool.

I choose things by how they resonate in my heart.

I'm not stopping. My dream has come true, and I'm staying.

There was a subtlety about Peggy Lee. It was powerful. There was a valuable use of space. Everything was not cluttered. Her voice was out front and was the key instrument.

I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.

When I sang that song, I felt it was almost as if some force had moved into my body. Things like that have only happened to me singing jazz. It doesn't happen when singing pop. I get so deeply into the music, it feels like I've become someone else.

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.

I say what's in my heart, and I do it in my concerts.

It seems that jazz is more cerebral and more mathematical in a sense.

Too often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it's too late.

I was kind of known as a ballad singer. People would send ballads. Some of them would go over my shoulder and float off the top of my head, and I just didn't feel anything. Then I would hear a song that would absolutely shake me.

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.

I don't think I was considered to be a cabaret singer because I didn't have patter that was written.

You know, I'm pretty much an open book.

I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.

I've always loved jazz.

Universal was absolutely marvelous about sitting down with me and listening to my input. It wasn't something where they chose a bunch of songs that were best sellers. They did a marvelous job on the packaging. It's a beautiful tribute.

Green-tech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st Century.

What the war did was give me the opportunity of three years of continuous reading, and it was in the course of reading that I became convinced that I should become an economist.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

Let's take a timeout. Let's allow investors the opportunity in a period of market calm to re-examine what's happened and to deploy new strategies into the marketplace.

We have a responsibility to ensure that every individual has the opportunity to receive a high-quality education, from prekindergarten to elementary and secondary, to special education, to technical and higher education and beyond.

When I talk to people in need, they tell me they want to hope; they are eager for opportunity; they are ready for better days. And I can tell you that every time their hopes are disappointed, all nations lose.

I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.

The men and women of our armed forces played an instrumental role in the election process - securing polling sites and providing security - that allowed so many Iraqis the opportunity to vote freely for the first time ever.

The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding.

Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.

Education is our greatest opportunity to give an irrevocable gift to the next generation.

When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn't find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business.

The promise of equal educational opportunity envisioned by the Brown decision remains unfulfilled.

If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

But it's been a great, humbling - and I've been very honored to have the opportunity to serve and to lead and to be the representative of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in Washington. And it's been the greatest honor of my life.

To have an opportunity to make a movie like Cabin Fever, you have to get stuff thrown on you or you have to fall into a pit of water. It brings you that much closer to your mindset as a character.

Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.

If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.

I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity.

Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.

The Olympics are coming... and it's a big problem in American politics, because the problem with holding the Olympics this fall is that we're all going to be focused on the Olympics, and it makes that window of opportunity for Gore to win the election that much smaller.

A lot of times I watch TV and I watch film and there's so many things I'd love to talk about that I feel don't get the opportunity to be shown. Sometimes things become very stereotypical and one-sided, and I feel like it's such a colorful world.

And I had a big opportunity with Richard Brooks, The Professionals, which is really a magnificent movie.