Singers From The United States

"It’s hard not to be occasionally overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge we’re facing in this pandemic but nothing has slowed for the strong of spirit during this time. It has been a relentless, pride-swallowing siege of a time, yet productive."

"I have the best fans in the world and I aim to utilise my platform for good — to share things I uncover about the world, climate, technology."

"By creating and associating and synergizing with Tony Stark and the Marvel Universe..and being a good company man but also being a little off kilter and being creative and then getting into all these other partnerships, it was a time when it’s like…[how] owners start looking like their pets…occasionally you would pull back from it and go, ‘Let me stop, let me get off the teet of this archetype and let me see where I stand.’ And you can feel really buffeted, you can get really spun out by it."

"It's like I've got a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal."

"I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since."

"I had an incredible 10-year run with Marvel which pushed me creatively. I now have tons more ambition to do things I haven’t done before. Evolving is key — the worst thing you can do is get in your own way. Just in the matter of me wanting to be a fit father, husband and citizen, it’d be irresponsible of me to not keep my eye ahead so I can prepare my mind for what’s to come and the transition. As an actor, every time I get a script now, I think about the commitment and time I’d be away from my missus and kiddos."

"Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever the f**k you were gonna do anyway."

"I have sinned against you, my Lord, and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God's forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me anymore."

"Do I have to get naked people for you to remember my name? It's Lynn from Snot."

"I'm addicted. Period. Y'know, I mean like... And it's weird because so many of the population, so much of the population is addicted and err... Y'know, compulsive and impulsive... I'm really like... compulsive about shit... When I can't fix my head with... y'know, with a certain drug or whatever, I'll clean something up, y'know, or I'll, I get really like... fucking fidgety and uncomfortable and I get... I fly off the handle easy, y'know, and it's like... if it's not... if I'm not gorging myself on-, on-, on one thing, I'm fucking... I'm trying to fill that... that hole some other way, y'know what I mean? It's always this great feeling of need and it doesn't ne-, necessarily have to be of anything in particular, it's just something that you don't know what it is which drives you that much more insane sometimes... y'know, and that's what a lot of people today, uhm, suffer from, and a lot of people don't even realise it, y'know. I don't profess to know everything about it but, y'know... I don't know... I just, uh, know that there's that hole that needs to be filled and, uh, a lot of people die trying."

"I'm a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o, Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues"

"It's the story of a very unfortunate colored man Who got arrested down in Old Hong Kong He got twenty years' privilege taken away from him When he kicked old Buddha's gong."

"Oft did I wonder why the setting sun Should look upon us with a blushing face: Is't not for shame of what he hath seen done, Whilst in our hemisphere he ran his race?"

"You sittin' here chained to your rockin' chair."

"Yet spirit immortal, the tomb can not bind thee, But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee A name which before thee no mortal hath won. Tho' nations may combat, and war's thunders rattle, No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o’er the plain: Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle, No sound can awake thee to glory again."

"On a lone barren isle, where the wild roaring billows Assail the stern rock, and the loud tempests rave, The hero lies still, while the dew-drooping willows, Like fond weeping mourners, lean over his grave. The lightnings may flash and the loud thunders rattle; He heeds not, he hears not, he's free from all pain; He sleeps his last sleep, he has fought his last battle; No sound can awake him to glory again!"

"I can say what Danny Kaye is like in real life. He's nice and gentle but he has a bit of a mean streak."

"[E]xclusively verbal humor have been conveyed by Harpo Marx, who with Charles Chaplin, Jimmy Savo, and Danny Kaye, ranks as a master artist of pantomime."

"I can't say what Danny Kaye is like in private life. There are too many of them."

"I am a wife-made man."

"I became an entertainer not because I wanted to but because I was meant to."

"Civilization? I'll stay right here [in the Congo]!"

":Polly Vernon:: Do you miss Britney?"

":Justin Timberlake:: Umm, yeah, you know, days will go by when I miss... I miss the good things, I miss the good things. I'll leave it at that. Britney has always surprised me."

":Polly Vernon:: With what? Her honesty?"

":Justin Timberlake:: Ha! No, no, no, not with that. I think, the size of her heart. She has a big heart, a really big heart. That's always impressed me about her."

"How famous am I? No more famous than you.' Well, no, you are considerably more famous than I am. 'Says who? Fuck it. Kelly Osbourne's more famous than me."

"There's a kind of silliness in the theater about what one contributes to a show. The producer obviously contributes the money... but must the actor contribute nothing at all? I’m not a modest fellow about those things. I contribute a great deal. And they always manage to hang you for having an interpretation. Isn’t [the theater] where your imagination should flower? Why must it always be dull as shit?"

"Mostel: If I appeared there, what if I did an imitation of a butterfly at rest? There is no crime in making anybody laugh. I don't care if you laugh at me. Congressman Jackson: If your interpretation of a butterfly at rest brought any money into the coffers of the Communist Party, you contributed directly to the propaganda effort of the Communist Party. Mostel: Suppose I had the urge to do the butterfly at rest somewhere? Congressman Doyle: Yes, but please, when you have the urge, don't have such an urge to put the butterfly at rest by putting some money in the Communist Party coffers as a result of that urge to put a butterfly at rest."

"I'm not even sure he knows who "Meat Loaf" is. He definitely would become the person in the song."

"When he performs my songs, I couldn't even dream of them being sung better."

"These stories get made up, and I don’t know from where. I have no idea. I didn’t make that one up — sometimes I make my own stories up — but I didn’t make that one up."

"Karaoke bars are devil worship!"

"We were aware of her profile, and it was… first, it’s artistic: can she do it? Is she capable of handling this? Can she handle it emotionally? The song. Because it’s a very emotional song. Can she handle it melodically? Does she have the range for it? Second, now then, you’ve got that, now you look to see…because it’s a very strange duet, and I’ve always said it was meant to be a duet. I had the song in ’86, and I don’t care what anybody else says; I know it was my song, it was given to me in ’86, I was gonna do it, it was always gonna be a duet, and I think the only real life of it is a duet. And that’s my opinion, and my opinion only. That’s it. But when it’s a duet, it’s a definitive duet. And then because of how it’s a call-and-response duet, you needed the timbre of the voices. If you get someone with the same timbres… I’m being analytical, but that’s exactly why we picked Marion Raven. And then on the fourth hand… what, she’s twenty-two years old? She can get MTV where I can’t!"

"You can decide what you want to eat for dinner, you can decide to go away for the weekend, and you can decide what clothes you’re going to wear in the morning, but when it comes to artistic things, there’s never a rhyme or reason. It’s, like, they just happen. And they happen when they happen."

"You gotta understand that people attach me and Jim Steinman. But you really have to attach Todd Rundgren to that. … you really have to credit Todd Rundgren for the initial mark. Yes, Steinman had things in his head. And, yes, I had some things in my head; I had how “All Revved Up with No Place to Go” should sound in my head. Jim had how “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” should sound in his head. But pulling things out of your head and accomplishing them, and somebody else trying to accomplish them, is a remarkable feat. … So not taking anything away from Jim, ‘cause Jim is an absolute genius and one of the smartest people that I’ve ever known, and I consider him one of my best friends. But, y’know, sometimes, people just… they pigeonhole things, and they go, “Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf.” And my thing is, no, stop it! Because the Bat Out of Hell records are this: it’s a big wheel, and everybody is a spoke in that wheel… and, at different times as that wheel’s turning, different people have more input than others. It’s, like, as a wheel turns, the bottom spokes take more than the top spokes…but, pretty soon, those are gonna be the bottom spokes, and their import is more. And, so, that’s how that goes with the Bat Out of Hell records… and that’s exactly Bat Out of Hell III."

"He was an absolutely mesmerizing, wonderful presence. His pupils would roll up into his head, and you'd see the whites of his eyes, and his hands would clutch. It was really powerful. He was extraordinary. As a performer, when he's at his best, he ranks among the three or four greatest I've ever seen in my life."

"You're not going to ask me that and if you did I'd pretend that you didn't because everybody and their mother plus their dog and cat and their goldfish asks me that."

"Joy, happiness, good, bad, all those terms are meaningless to me. If you think of yourself as a separate soul, you're fucked."

"You want people walking away from the conversation with some kernel of wisdom or some kind of impact."

"I play myself all the time... on camera and off. What else can I do?"

"I’m a late bloomer. It’s just a matter of how you evolve; of what your pace is. Hopefully, the older you get the more you grow. So, that has been my speed, the beat of my drum. I march to the beat of a different drum … you’ll pardon me for using this expression."

"No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad."

"Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter. There were paper-doll books of her and of the Dionne Quintuplets-five identical girls born to a French-Canadian family and of the famous dollhouse of the actress Colleen Moore, which contained every luxury conceivable in perfect miniature, including a tiny phonograph that played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting. I must have seen her dancing with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in The Littlest Rebel, but I remember her less as a movie star than as a presence, like President Roosevelt, or Lindbergh, whose baby had been stolen; but she was a little girl whose face was everywhere on glass mugs and in coloring books as well as in the papers."

"Watching clips of her, it's so amazing that she was such a part of our film history from the very beginning. I'm sure it wasn't easy being a child star, although she went on to become an ambassador, so she re-invented herself along the way. But it's a great loss. I wish all the best for her family and thank her for her contribution."

"When the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time during this Depression, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles."

"I have no trouble being taken seriously as a woman and a diplomat here. My only problems have been with Americans who, in the beginning, refused to believe I had grown up since my movies."

"Politicians are actors too, don't you think?"

"Sunnybrook Farm is now a parking lot; the petticoats are in the garbage can, where they belong in the modern world; and I detest censorship."

"Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool."