Cole Porter wrote Anything Goes and four more hits for me

I have been ambitious to be a somebody from the time I was 5 years old

Mom and Pop were proud of my popularity, but from their point of view, show business was no way to make a living.

Now what kind of an attitude is that, 'These things happen?' They only happen because this whole country is just full of people who, when these things happen, they just say, 'These things happen,' and that's why they happen! We gotta have control of what happens to us.

I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them.

I remember Tallulah (Bankhead) telling of going into a public ladies' room and discovering there was no toilet tissue. She looked underneath the booth and said to the lady in the next stall, 'I beg your pardon, do you happen to have any toilet tissue in there?' The lady said no. So Tallulah said, 'Well, then, dahling, do you have two fives for a ten?'

My father taught me to read music and play the piano-but not well, even though people have said that I'm a natural musician