“I’ve always loved life, irrespective of all the ups and downs that have filled my journey.”

I wouldn’t let a biopic be made on me. That’s because I don’t believe in them. I don’t like them.

From my experience and understanding, I believe money follows name and fame, while recognition calls for a huge amount of sacrifice. To get something, you have to lose something. That’s the rule of life.

I have been singing for the last 50 years, you know, so I deserve a break. Besides, there are talented singers around who can do justice to their work.

My father passed away in 1942, and three-four months after his death, I had to start working. There was a responsibility on my shoulders to run the household. It was my duty as the eldest child in the house.

There are so many songs that I could not sing the way I wanted to. When such songs come on television or radio, I shut them off or leave the room.

For me, awards are a token of respect that people are giving me. So no matter how many awards I am receiving, I always feel emotional.

As a singer, you have to bring the soul to the song.

Today, the scope for variety has shrunk drastically. There are only a handful of topnotch composers like A. R. Rahman, Anu Malik, Jatin-Lalit that’s it.

I appreciate the change associated with people’s growth, but I don’t like the changes in our lives. I came to Mumbai in 1945, so imagine my acceptance of the massive changes around. I have witnessed every kind of revolution.

The privileged classes today are bothered about petrol and diesel prices while the poor can’t afford two meals a day. I am a very small person, but I want us to think beyond personal and regional interests.

In my opinion, the biggest achievement was by Shankar-Jaikishan. With Raj Kapoor’s ‘Barsaat,’ they changed the way we looked at playback singing.

Nowadays, there are seven music directors in one film. I had never heard of such a thing before. If one of our old music directors was told to share a score with others, he would have left the assignment.

I believe in one power, and that is the hand of God. I respect all religions.

When I started out, there was so much work that I couldn’t think of doing anything else. I would go for recordings by 8.30 A.M., that, too, in trains. I used to come home at night. I was travelling alone everywhere.

I have decided that I won’t take up assignments that don’t interest me.

People, who accused me of practising a monopoly were wrong. The media fuelled rumours about my ‘monopoly.’ The first question I was always asked during interviews was about my supposed monopoly.

The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it.

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

The consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence, almost religious dignity.

If you so choose, each day can be filled with even more joy than the one before. If you so choose, even the most seemingly random events can work in your favor.

Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.

If they are, they can fill in the details even better than I could, just with their imaginations.

Impersonal place needs something significant to fill it up.” We’ve abandoned the old belief that humanity is at the physical center of the universe but more come back to believing we are at the center of meaning.