What we live with is ourselves. And when you have your own identity you are much easier to live with.

I don't have an assistant. I make a lot of people around me my slaves, but no assistant.

You can't lie when you dance. It's so direct. You do what is in you. It is impossible to dance out of the side of your mouth.

I can't advise any of the young ones, because I don't know what their background was, but I would suggest that anyone who wants to be famous more than anything - there's a problem.

In some ways, America has grown up to be a masterpiece of self-concern.

On the stage you try to act real. On the screen you try to be real.

I do miss the stage. There's nothing like it, nothing. When I did my one-woman show and played the Palace and played the Gershwin and all that, I did - what? - eight shows or maybe more a week. Of course you can't do anything else, and you can't run quickly for a cab in the rain, and you can't have a drunken love affair. You can't do any of that. Because you've got to be perfectly healthy. And I guess I value enjoying my life a little bit more than the discipline these days.