Every damn fool thing you do in this life you pay for.

I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.

Americans want beauties, not me. I’m not the Parisian bombshell they expected. Can you see me as a chorus girl? Where’s my feather up the ass? They think I’m sad, they’re dumb. I don’t connect to them

Singing is a way of escaping. It's another world. I'm no longer on earth.

All I've done all my life is disobey.

I always thought my days spent in darkness [as a child she had cataracts and was unable to see for nearly four years] gave me a very special sensitivity. Much later, when I really wanted to hear, really 'see' a song, I'd close my eyes, and when I wanted to bring it out of the very depths of myself, out of my guts, out of my belly, when the song had to come from far away, I'd close my eyes.

Use your faults, use your defects; then you're going to be a star.