“Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood.”

When two people love each other, they don’t look at each other, they look in the same direction.

I did everything he did but backwards & in high heels.

You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.

The most important thing in anyone’s life is to be giving something. The quality I can give is fun, joy and happiness. This is my gift.

I believe in dressing for the occasion. There’s a time for sweater, sneakers and Levis and a time for the full-dress jazz.

I don’t care what the critics say. My fabulous mom will give me a good review if nobody else does.

Rhythm is born in all of us. To be a desirable dancing partner, you don’t have to do all the intricate fancy steps that happen to be in vogue. All you have to do is be a good average dancer, and anybody who spends the time and effort can accomplish this.

My faith in humanity leads me to believe that people are looking for something more elevating than the sordid details of the intimate aspects of one’s personal life.

Part of the joy of dancing is conversation. Trouble is, some men can’t talk and dance at the same time.

The kids today, they think they can dance with their faces.

I try to feed my hunger rather than my appetite.

I’ve got enough nerve to do anything!

If I’ve learned any one lesson from life, it’s this: If you don’t stand for something, you will stand for anything.

When you’re happy, you don’t count the years.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Girls can do everything men can do…just backwards and in heels

Why wait for the loss of hearing to appreciate sound? Turn off the white noise of your thoughts and start to listen.

The only way I’d ever recruit a white quarterback to play for me is if his mom and daddy would both have to be black, and that’s the only way I would do it.

I really loved living in the White House, but I don’t miss it at all.

We now have a president who tries to save money by turning off lights in the White House, even as he heads toward a staggering addition to the national debt. “L.B.J.” should stand for Light Bulb Johnson.

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

We like things to be black or white, tall or short, here or there.

I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.

in our culture, the professional, and largely white, middle class is taken as a social norm – a bland and neutral mainstream – from which every other group or class is ultimately a kind of deviation.