May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine. 

Critics don't bother me because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it. And if I'm good, I know I'm good. I know best about myself, so a critic doesn't anger me. 

I lived in a plenty tough neighborhood. When somebody called me a 'dirty little Guinea', there was only one thing to do-break his head. When I got older, I realized that you shouldn't do it that way. I realized that you've got to do it through education. Children are not to blame. It is the parents. How can a child know whether his playmate is an Italian, a Jew or Irish, unless the parents have discussed it in the privacy of their homes. 

I think my greatest ambition in life is to pass on to others what I know. 

I wish that one of these days somebody would learn to do [my art] so it doesn't die where it is. 

I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good friends, fine family - and I don't think I could ask for anything more than that, actually. 

You only live once, and the way I live, once is enough. 

I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life--in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. 

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. 

Live every day like it's your last.

Stay alive, stay active, and get as much practice as you can. 

People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it. 

There are several things I think I would have done if I had the chance again. I would have been a little more patient about getting out into the world. I would have seen to it that I had a more formal education. I would have become an accomplished musician, in the sense that I would have studied formally, even if I never used it. 

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day. 

Rock 'n Roll is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear. 

I'm gonna live till I die. 

Never yawn in front of a lady. 

I don't know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an over acute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I've been there - and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me. They can't help it. Sentimentality, after all, is an emotion common to all humanity. 

The best revenge is massive success. 

Here's to the confusion of our enemies!

When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out. 

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent. 

Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world--to an individual or to a nation. 

Cock your hat - angles are attitudes. 

Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels. 

All day long, they lie in the sun, and when the sun goes down, they lie some more. 

I am a thing of beauty. 

Don't get even, get mad. 

Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing - if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail. 

Orange is the happiest color. 

Oh, I just wish someone would try to hurt you so I could kill them for you. 

I'm not one of those complicated, mixed-up cats. I'm not looking for the secret to life.... I just go on from day to day, taking what comes. 

If I had as many love affairs as you have given me credit for, I'd now be speaking to you from a jar at the Harvard Medical School. 

I like intelligent women. When you go out, it shouldn't be a staring contest. 

Too many times I've been asked to say something about friends who are gone - this is one of the hardest....Dean was my brother - not through blood, but through choice....He has been like the air I breathe - always there, always close by. 

Fresh air makes me throw up. I can't handle it. I'd rather be around three Denobili cigars blowing in my face all night. 

The martial music of every side burned delinquent on the face of the earth. 

Dare to wear the foolish clown face. 

You treat a lady like a dame, and a dame like a lady. 

You gotta love livin', baby, 'cause dyin' is a pain in the ass. 

You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad - if you're indifferent, Endsville. 

Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I'm honest. 

Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy. 

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. 

I get an audience involved, personally involved, in a song because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately. I can't help myself, I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.