Art is for healing ourselves, and everybody needs their own personal art to heal up their problems.

I can't sing half as well as Claudia Lennear. Hats off to her, but somehow, things happened for me.

You and I, travel to the beat of a different drum, can't you tell by the way I run, every time you make eyes at me.

Being an entertainer, especially in times like these, is really a public service.

I never wrote anything down. I never kept a diary, never kept a journal. I did write one letter home about touring with the Doors that I used as a reference for the book for some details there, and then I was glad I had that, but that was it.

American radio from the '30s through the '60s was just fabulous. There was such a diversity.

Someone once asked me why people sing. I answered that they sing for many of the same reasons the birds sing. They sing for a mate, to claim their territory, or simply to give voice to the delight of being alive in the midst of a beautiful day. Perhaps more than the birds do, humans hold a grudge. They sing to complain of how grievously they have been wronged, and how to avoid it in the future. They sing to help themselves execute a job of work. They sing so the subsequent generations won’t forget what the current generation endured, or dreamed, or delighted in.