You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.

The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!

When you say you're doing an opera, it's like when you're a seven-year-old and say, 'I'm off to Washington, Dad.' You kind of go, 'Sure. Sure you are, son.'

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

I may be drunk but at least I'm not insane.

I know a girl, she been married so many times, she got rice marks all over her face

There's truths there that spiral out of what appears to be just a word game. That's what I find mystifying about the meanings of things: they kind of unscrew themselves from the practical words.