The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.

Trouble just seems to come my way-unbidden, unwelcome, unneeded.

If you don't know the guy on the other side of the world, love him anyway because he's just like you. He has the same dreams, the same hopes and fears. It's one world, pal. We're all neighbors.

I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.

And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.

I don't know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation.

Oh, I just wish someone would try to hurt you so I could kill them for you.