“The only thing better than singing is more singing.”

Whatever she does to my songs, she always makes them sound better.

I think I do better when I sing.

I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.

Coming through the years, and finding that I not only have just the fans of my day, but the young ones of today – that’s what it means, it means it was worth all of it.

Everybody wants to know about my style and how it came about. It’s no big secret. It’s the way I feel.

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.

She has been more famous, over a longer time span, than any other female singer.

I’ve had some wonderful love affairs and some that didn’t work out. I don’t want to dwell on that and I don’t want to put people down, but I think all the fabulous places I’ve been, the wonderful things that have happened for me, the great people I’ve met – that ought to make a story.

Music is the universal language. It brings people closer together.

When I’m on stage I feel at home

Ella knows her way around her voice as very few people today. But there are times when she seems to be unaware there are things the human voice just doesn’t do. She does them.

What everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved.

I don’t want to say the wrong thing, which I always do. I think I do better when I sing.

It isn’t where you came from, its where you’re going that counts.

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside. I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

A wise man sings his joy in the closet of his heart.

Is there a short-eared koobish, then?’ Mmmyes …’ said J.Lo. ‘But it is technically not really a koobish. Is more alike a kind of singing pumpkin.’ We had conversations like these all the time, where I just eventually gave up.

He’s not going to let anybody do his singing for him.

And show up in a place I never thought I’d ever be and have kids in the same room singing these songs I’d written so far away. To me, that’s so surreal.

I have a very young brother and sister, and if you can get a kid singing the words to a song after they heard it for the first time, it’s a hit.

Nowadays in pop, there’s not a lot of men that are singing big and loud and high – it’s not as common as it once was.

I started rejecting the proper way to sing and I started singing.

You learn to sing with, not argue at, your possible readers.