“The fabulous places I’ve been, wonderful things that’ve happened, great people I’ve met ought to make a story.”

You take romance – I’ll take Jell-O.

She is amazingly creative, bringing so much more to a song than just a singer. She is a first-class musician and the most gracious person in the world.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.

Sometimes when we’re flying or in the hotel, I might run over songs, or in the bathroom.

Every time I look down on this timeless town, whether blue or gray be her skies, whether loud be her cheers, or whether soft be her tears, more and more do I realize that. I love Paris.

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.

See the mountains kiss high Heaven And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea – What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?

I want the audience to watch my films, and that is what I value more than any awards.

The characters I portray are an extension of what I’ve seen, heard, or read, and so what you see in my films are how I understand life.

Religious superstitions more than all other influences put together cripple & enslave woman, but so long as women themselves do not see it & hug their chains, we have a great educational work to do.

When you’re dead, you don’t breathe, you don’t see, you don’t feel, you don’t love.

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!

Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth.

Seeing off the new ball is important for me. I know that once I do that, the only way I could get out could be from my own mistake.