“I spend too much money on my sets and my gowns. I think the presentation is important. I don’t think people want to see the old show all the time.”

Being a parent is very important to me.

I want to live in Paris for a couple of years. I’m dying to do the Josephine Baker story. I really want to be there and do it. It’s certainly my intention to do it.

I just appreciate still having the longevity that I’ve had in my career.

I have three girls, and I say the same thing to them. I’m not involved in their careers because I’ve learned that it’s important for them to stand on their own two feet. They’ll feel better and prouder of themselves if they do.

The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, ‘What’s so great about Billie Holiday?’

I know that my fans want to know who I’m sleeping with, but it’s really none of their business.

If I’m with a man I’m soft and buttery.

It takes a long time to get to be a diva. I mean, you gotta work at it.

I don’t judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they’re a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person.

I don’t care about vacations. I go away and I come back real quick because I like my work. I really like my work to consume me.

I’m not really a songwriter – I’m an interpreter. So in a sense I am an actress first and foremost. I act out the songs, and I lead with my heart.

It has always been, and still is, my intention to build a playground in Central Park.

One thing you cannot control is nature.

My travels led me to where I am today. Sometimes these steps have felt painful, difficult, but led me to greater happiness and opportunities.

When I’m working I actually forget to eat. I don’t eat sweets because I don’t care about them. I have no real secrets. I just realize that as I get older I should stay strong so I exercise more.

My problem is that people have been writing books about me.A lot of things that people write about you are incorrect, but you don’t fight about it.

I feel like whatever you’ve done in your career, good or bad, it’s nothing but preparation for the big events to come.

So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.

I’m very interested in the improvisation because one of the things I do is to help train scientists to communicate in a better way and more personal way when they’re making a presentation, and I use improvisation to do that.

[Salomaybe] is my presentation, my vision of the world. Not so much to satisfy the audience at large.

Pop is a little bit theatrical. That’s the whole vibe. That’s the point – is that it’s great music, great melodies, great hooks. But, on top of it, it’s a presentation. There’s a showmanship about it. And that’s why I wanted to be a pop star.

Being in love, she concluded, is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone.

I regret that the presentation I made at the UN turned out to be wrong. It was wrong on the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but pretty much right on intentions and capabilities.

I watch everybody every night, from sitting down to being on their feet at the end, and I feel a sense of reinvention, of caring, presenting these songs in their purest form.