You better get busy living, because dying's a pain in the ass.

To me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle. The witch doctor tries to convince us that we have to ask God for help, to spell out to him what we need, even to bribe him with prayer or cash on the line.

Nothing anybody's said or written about me ever bothers me, except when it does.

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

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.

The thing that influenced me most was the way Tommy played his trombone. It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin-not sounding like them, but "playing" the voice like those instrumentalists.

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.