“I really think I want to live in a lot of places.I don’t want possessions to hold me down.”

My family called me a wiggle tail because I was a little skinny, wiry kid full of energy.

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.

It’s like learning to fall properly. If you can manage not to tighten up you won’t hurt yourself as much. The same theory applies to your day, physically and emotionally. The tensions simply can’t take hold.

This I regard as history’s highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds.

While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.

It’s terrible to allow conventional habits to gain a hold on a whole household; to eat, sleep and live by clock ticks.

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

I’ve learned, That when your newly born grandchild holds your little finger in his little fist, that you’re hooked for life.

The issue is that if you hold onto the resentment against yourself, you’re just going to recreate that destructive pattern in different forms because unconsciously it’s still a belief system that limits you.

I’m not sure what the future holds but I do know that I’m going to be positive.