I'm just a singer, Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture.

The only male singer who I've seen besides myself and who's better than me--that is Michael Jackson.

The martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.

With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.

Rock n' roll is the most disgusting form of expression, it's brutal, malefic, a pestilential aphrodisiac, the preferred music of the delinquents of the earth.

Should have a Ph.d. on the subject of women. Anyhow the fact of the matter is I've failed usually. I'm exceptionally enamored with women; I respect them. Yet, in the same way as all men, I don't comprehend them.

I would like to be remembered as a man who brought an innovation to popular singing.