I've never sung a single song in my whole life on purpose to shock anyone. My 'hot numbers' are all, if you will notice, written about something that is real in the lives of millions of people.

I have been poor and I have been rich. Rich is better.

I would start off with a lively rag, then would come a ballad, followed by a comedy song and a novelty number, and finally, the hot song. In this way, I left the stage with the audience laughing their heads off.

Once you start carrying your own suitcase, paying your own bills, running your own show, you've done something to yourself that makes you one of those women men like to call 'a pal' and 'a good sport,' the kind of woman they tell their troubles to. But you've cut yourself off from the orchids and the diamond bracelets, except those you buy yourself.

Gradually, at the concerts, I began to hear calls for 'the fat girl'.... Then I would jump up for the piano stool, forgetting about my size [145 lbs at age 13], and work to get all the laughs I could get.

Playing two months or more in one city meant new songs all the time. If people paid their dimes to see and hear Sophie Tucker, they didn't want to hear the same songs over and over or see the same clothes.

It is a commentary on Berlin in 1931 that ... it was 'My Yiddishe Momme' that the Berlin Broadcasting Company asked for.