“New Year’s Eve, we’re going to be doing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Symphony Hall. It makes me feel good, because of all the people they could have had, they wanted me! We do have to do a little work with the rhythm section.”

On Saturday afternoons, there was a film, of course, and then we did about four shows between the films. And I would do a tap dance, a little military tap.

The place that seems most dangerous is exactly where safety lies.

I have absolutely no desire and no thought of quitting ever.

Young people who are just starting out somehow need to let you know they know how to sing.

I sang for my family. And I think probably the first time I sang and got paid for it, I was about 6 or 7.

If you’re able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.

The world wants us to be who we truly are, not who we think others want us to be.

If you’re happy, you eat. If you’re sad, you eat. You lose a job, you eat. You get a job, you eat. It’s, you know, it’s addiction.

Even within the last three or four years, I have a greater ability to communicate, I think. I have more courage to show the stuff… And it does take courage.

What actors need to do is to find a way to show people their despair, their joy, their pain, their exhilaration. All of these deep, deep emotional things – good and bad – so that if you’re able to do that, then there’s a kind of resonance that happens.

I look back at photographs and I remember at the time I thought I was not very attractive.

In order to retain our position as the dynamic duo of the world, it’s vital that in the UK and US we keep opportunities open for new people and new ideas. And we can never allow our economies to get furred up.

When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while, you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.

If you want to move to a new level in your life, you must break through your comfort zone and practice doing things that are not comfortable.

There is something about New Orleans that embodies passion; I’ve never seen that before.

I have smuggled so many ingredients across so many borders, like shallot confit from Thailand, or a new sauce from New Orleans not approved by the FDA.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Nobody knows me – I’m incognito. It’s all new, all fun.

A dogma recognized throughout antiquity… (that) the soul expiates its sins in the darkness of the infernal regions and… afterwards… passes into new bodies, there to undergo new trials.