More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

The young people look great on television. They're youthful and have a lot of zip and energy, but when you see them live, they can only do about 20 minutes because they haven't got the training to hold an audience for an hour and a half or so.

I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.

I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.

More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform.

To work is to feel alive.

I've been so fortunate because I never really had ups and downs as far as my career. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I've been sold out all over the world.

As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn.

Every day feels like just starting out because I still have so much more to learn.

Every show is different. The public has always been nice to me. I'm fortunate that way.

Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19.

Fame comes and goes. Longevity is the thing to aim for.

Gaga is a gorgeous singer, and when she sings a great ballad, I get goose bumps.

I don't sing operatically, and I sing very intimately, but I still do the scales, and I think in terms of intonation and making sure that I'm hitting the notes right on the head... and having it appear quite effortless.

I get up, and boy, I can't wait to paint and study music and keep learning. I just love it.

I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs.

I have grown to appreciate the power of believing in myself and of always having faith in myself. I rarely look back; instead, I always look forward. There is so much of life that we miss when we wallow in regret.

I lived for 15 years in Los Angeles, and I still can't believe that the handsomest man in the world, Cary Grant, and the greatest performer in the world, Fred Astaire, and Johnny Carson, one after another - they were all in my home at different times. I celebrated my 50th birthday with them. Unforgettable.

I love entertaining people; I strive to make them feel good, and they make me feel wonderful. To explain it simply, I like what I do, and my ambition is to get better as I get older. That's really what I'm all about.

I loved Art Tatum! And, through him, and other different jazz musicians, I actually found my technique.

I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was.

I still feel that I can get better somehow. And I search for it all of the time.

I still get a little nervous before performing. You don't want to forget a lyric; you don't want to make a mistake. I still get butterflies. You can try to judge an audience, but you can only really judge things by the applause.

I still have a lot to learn. I'm concentrating on learning a lot more about music.

I take care of myself. I work out three times a week. I have a trainer, and we just work out for an hour.

I want to try to prove that at 100, I could sing as well as I was singing when I was 45 or 43.

I was possessed with a wonderful example of my Italian American family. They would come over and join us every Sunday, all my aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, and I would sing for them.

I was taught never to compromise: to never sing a cheap song. I never look down at the audience and think that they are ignorant or think that I'm more intelligent than they are. To think otherwise is totally incorrect and runs contrary to everything I was raised to believe.

I'd like to prove that if you take care of yourself, you can actually not regret the fact that you've become an old-timer, but you can just still improve and actually get better.

I'll never retire.

I've been very fortunate. I'm doing what I love, and I'm getting away with it, you know?

I've never worked a day in my life.

If music sounds dated, it means it wasn't very good in the first place.

If something is good, it's always good. You don't have to change it.

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.

It sounds so simple, but if you just be yourself, you're different than anyone else.

Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.

Lady Gaga is the Picasso of the entertainment world. She's very intelligent.

My whole life has been singing and painting. I just do those two things.

My whole premise has been, right from the beginning, that it would take me a lifetime to learn to explain myself as an artist. As you grow older, you learn what to do and what to leave out. You kind of simplify your work and get the same thing done with fewer strokes. It's pretty interesting to me.

Never treat the audience disrespectfully.

Performers should really go to the best schools, like Lady Gaga, you know, she went to NYU and had great teachers... It's best to really study your technique as much as you possibly can so you can have a long career instead of a quick one that's a failure.

Sinatra invited me once to his birthday party in L.A. I was young, and I felt great about it. But when I got there, the Rat Pack were all in the kitchen laughing their heads off.

Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you.

Singing is a gift.

The United States created the best popular songs that were ever written, and from the 1920s to the 1940s, it was a renaissance period. It stopped in 1950.

The high point for me in my career was when Sinatra called me his favourite performer in the Fifties. And I've been sold out ever since.