I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life -- in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don't believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice.

The best is yet to come and won't that be fine.

Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.

It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me.

For nobody else, gave me thrill-with all your faults, I love you still. It had to be you, wonderful you, it had to be you.

My greatest teacher was not a vocal coach, not the work of other singers, but the way Tommy Dorsey breathed and phrased on the trombone.

For what is a man, what has he got. If not himself, then he has naught.