16 quotes
What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can.
The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.
The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)
You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad — if you're indifferent, Endsville.
Moment of Grace: The American City in the 1950s (2002)
Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I'm honest.
I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living his life, and who had good friends, a fine family. I don't think I could ask for anything more than that, actually.
If I had as many love affairs as you've given me credit for, I would now be speaking to you from a jar at the Harvard Medical School.
But it is Billie Holiday, whom I first heard in 52nd Street clubs in the early 1930s, who was and still remains the single greatest musical influence on me.
If you possess something but you can't give it away, then you don't possess it... it possesses you.
And may the last voice you hear be mine!
If I can make it there, I'm going to make it anywhere! It's up to you, New York!
The only male singer who I've seen besides myself and who's better than me – that is Michael Jackson.
I'm going to be the best singer in the World, [...] the best singer that ever was.
For years I've nursed a secret desire to spend the Fourth of July in a double hammock with a swingin' redheaded broad … but I could never find me a double hammock.
The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)
[On religion] I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, benzedrine or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)
Fear is the enemy of logic.
The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)
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.
The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)