Singers From The United States

"I can not draw or paint worth a damn, because I can't see it in my head before I do it. I can sculpt and I do crafts but I can not draw. When it comes to music I can hear it before it happens, which most people can't do."

"If you’re gonna take the audience on a life long ride, you’ve got to allow them to become intimate with you. If they’re not intimate, they’re never gonna know you."

"You are never so alone as when you are ill on stage. The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people."

"I really hadn't intended on becoming a professional musician, but that isn't to say that I didn't have the dreams of being a Judy Garland in some sort of wonderful musical where this music came out of nowhere; things like that."

"My mom was a phoenix who always expected to rise again from the ashes of her latest disaster. And in spite of her self-doubts, she had a very strong sense of who she was. She had a sense of self-worth. She loved being Judy Garland. Did she secretly long to be Frances Gumm? Somebody, Minnesota housewife? Are you kidding? She'd have run off with a vaudeville troupe just the way my grandfather did."

"My mother once told me never be a second-rate version of somebody else when you can be a first-rate version of yourself."

"It really scared me to do what Mom did because I never did anything that she did. I promised her that I would never sing her songs, and I kept my promise. "You sing them better than anybody. I don't want to be a second-rate example of you. I want to be a first-rate example of myself.""

"I'm carrying on a tradition. But I'd rather be a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of somebody else. I'm proud of my parents, and the only way that I can prove it to them is to take what they gave me and work my head off."

"I don't sing them because I couldn't sing them as well as she did. I'd rather be a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of anybody."

"I couldn't sing Mama's special songs. I couldn't do them as well. I would rather present a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of Mama."

"Liza Minelli said she can't sing well enough those "special songs" of her late mother, Judy Garland, so she doesn't sing them at all. The award-winning entertainer said she'd "rather present a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of Mama.""

"I wish you would mention the joy she had for life, that’s what she gave me. If she was the tragic figure they say she was, I would be a wreck, wouldn't I? It was her love of life that carried her through everything. The middle of the road was never for her — it bored her. She wanted the pinnacle of excitement. If she was happy, she wasn’t just happy, she was ecstatic. And when she was sad, she was sadder then anyone. She lived eight lives in one, and yet I thought she would outlive us all. She was a great star, and a great talent, and for the rest of my life I will be proud to be Judy Garland's daughter. It wasn’t suicide, it wasn’t sleeping pills, it wasn’t cirrhosis. I think she was just tired, like a flower that blooms and gives joy and beauty to the world and then wilts away."

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."

"As for my feelings toward "Over the Rainbow", it's become part of my life. It is so symbolic of all dreams and wishes that I'm sure that's why people sometimes get tears in their eyes when they hear it."

"I wanted to believe, and I tried my damnedest to believe, in the rainbow I tried to get over, and I couldn't! … So what? Lots of people can't!"

"Wouldn`t it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe we'd like each other a little bit more."

"They were little drunks. They got smashed every night and the police used to scoop them up in butterfly nets."

"Go and tell that nasty, rude little princess that we've known each other for long enough and gabbed enough in ladies' rooms that she should skip the ho-hum royal routine and just pop over here and ask me herself. … Tell her I'll sing if she christens a ship first."

"I'm just an Irish biddy."

"I've never looked through a keyhole without finding someone was looking back."

"I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot."

"When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery. You find that no one group has a monopoly on looks, brains, goodness or anything else. It takes all the people - black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants - to make up America.."

"I was on the way to my hotel, and I passed a hotel going in the opposite direction."

"Thanks to our brave allies: you gallant Russian bear, you British everywhere."

"In his prime, the young comic walked onto a stage with the confidence of a man who owned it, and by the time he walked off, he did."

"No doubt the funniest exploit I was involved in was dropping leaflets on the Bob Hope Christmas show at Cu Chi in 1969. Our company was assigned to provide perimeter security and air cover for the show, so none of our guys would get to see it. The night before, some enlisted men came to me with boxes of small white leaflets upon which they had written messages welcoming Bob Hope to Cu Chi. Three platoons had stayed up all night making these things, and they begged me to drop them on the show, since they knew I'd be up there. I told them it was closed airspace and you can't do that without getting into big trouble, but in a weak moment I let them talk me into it. Sure enough, in the middle of the show, I took a sharp turn, ignored the controller in my earphones, who wanted to know what I thought I was doing, and we dropped the leaflets. If you watch the videotape of that show, you can see Hope looking up as the leaflets came down. The next day, I was called in front of the CO, but he let me off when I explained why I had done it. In 1975, I was finishing my college degree at Saint Martin's in Olympia, Washington. Nobody could figure out who to get for a graduation speaker, so I suggested Bob Hope. Everyone said, "Great, you go get him." It took some time, working through his assistants, but I finally got him on the phone and explained that I was the guy who dropped the snow on his show at Cu Chi. "Why'd you do that?" he immediately asked. When I explained how I couldn't turn the troops down, he said, "Okay, I'll speak at your graduation." And he did. I was his escort the whole day, and he continued to pepper me with questions."

"For years, as I've said, Bob has worked hard for our family's sake to cut our traveling to a minimum. But there are some 300,000 miles he and I shared that we wouldn't take back for anything. I mean the world-famous Bob Hope Holiday Tours to the armed forces stationed in remote outposts overseas, made on behalf of the U.S.O. "Go with us one time, Anita, and it will get into your blood," Bob Hope suggested in 1960, the first year Bob and I were married. "You'll never play to a greater audience.""

"Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth in a gas station in Anaheim, providing they have a camera there and three people. He'll go to the opening of a market to receive an award. He'd get an award from Thom McCan for wearing their shoes. It's pathetic. It's a bottomless pit. A barrel that has no floor. He must be a man who has an ever-crumbling estimation of himself. He's constantly filling himself up. He's like a junkie – an applause junkie. What happens to those people when they can't get up and do their shtick, God only knows. Bob Hope, Christ, instead of growing old gracefully or doing something with his money, be helpful, all he does is he has an anniversary with the President looking on. It's sad. He gets on an airplane every two minutes always going someplace. It didn't bother him at all to work the Vietnam War. Oh, he took that in his stride. He did his World War II and Korean War act. "Our boys" and all that. He’s a pathetic guy."

"You mean like Democrats?"

"I know I'm in England because this morning, my stomach got up two hours before I did and had a cup of tea! I've had so much tea, I slosh when I walk! You have to drink tea - I've tasted the coffee!"

"You look like my friend Debbie. That's really weird … do you get that a lot? — It's sad, though, 'cause you know, we're not really friends anymore. But, uh, it's not your fault. Seriously, it was 'cause she's, um … not "born again Christian" … oh! — "pathological liar.""

"I'm so glad Courtney Love is here; I left my crack in my other purse."

"I got jury duty … and I didn't want to go, so my friend said, "You should write something really really racist on the form when you return it. Like, you should put 'I hate chinks'." And I said, "I'm not going to put that on there just to get out of jury duty. I don't want people to think that about me." So instead I wrote, "I love chinks." And who doesn't?"

"Once I was with two men in one night. But I could never do it again—I could hardly walk afterward. Two dinners? That's a lot of food."

"I Hope The Jews Did Kill Christ. I’d Fucking Do It Again in a Second."

"I'll take this opportunity to answer one of the most repeated questions: why didn't I choose to depict Mohammed having sex? The answer is simple. I don't want to get blown up with explosives. I'm afraid of angering Muslims, but not afraid of angering Jews and Christians. So I chose to depict the Judeo-Christian God instead. It seems extremely obvious to me, but so many people asked."

"I'll be back. I'll be black. I'll be white black."

"If we can send a person to the moon, we can send someone with AIDS to the moon, and then someday we can send everybody with AIDS to the moon."

"[holds up an egg] This is AIDS. AIDS is as real as an egg."

"I learned that people in wheelchairs are allowed to have marathons … which, to me, seems like cheating, but what are you gonna say?"

"Also, I learned whether you are gay, bisexual, it doesn't matter, you know … because, at the end of the day, they're both gross. But mostly, I learned that elderly black women are wise beyond their years … but younger black women are prostitutes."

"I love you more than bears love honey, I love you more than Jews love money, I love you more than Asians are good at math. I love you even if it's not hip, I love you more than black guys don't tip, I love you like Puerto Ricans need baths."

"When God gives you AIDS – and God does give you AIDS – make lemon-AIDS!"

"On the law that requires women to wait twenty-four hours before they are permitted to have an abortion: I think it's a good law. The other day I wanted to go get an abortion. I really wanted an abortion, but then I thought about it and it turned out I was just thirsty."

"I want to get an abortion. But my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving."

"A couple nights ago, I was licking jelly off my boyfriend's penis. And I thought, "Oh my God – I'm turning into my mother!""

"I saw my father's penis once. But it was okay, because I was so young … and so drunk."

"I was raped by a doctor … which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl."

"I've sued my manager for sexual harassment. And it's real hard, and a big strain on me. Because he hasn't done anything."

"I buy water at the liquor store across the street from where I live. So I'm walking into the door, and standing, loitering, outside the door is a man. And I walk by him to go in, and he says, [in a gruff male voice] "I want pussy!" Now, I don't want to seem conceited or anything, but [flattered smile] he was talking about me!"