“I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot.”

I’ve always taken ‘The Wizard of Oz’ very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.

Give the people what they want and then go have a hamburger.

When I die I have visions of fags singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast.

People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience. I want to give them two hours of just pow.

Audiences have kept me alive.

When you have lived the life I’ve lived, when you’ve loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad — well, that’s when you realize you’ll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you’d rather die first.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart.

You are never so alone as when you are ill on stage. The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people.

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.

I’ve been in love with audiences all my life, and I’ve tried to please. I hope I did.

Behind every cloud is another cloud.

Wouldn`t it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe we’d like each other a little bit more.

Soon the sun beams will smile through. Before you jump out of that bed, just know, the thought of you was the first thing that hit my head.

I think there’s something peculiar about me that I haven’t died. It doesn’t make sense but I refuse to die.

If I’m such a legend, then why am I so lonely? If I’m such a legend, then why do I sit at home for hours staring at the damned telephone, hoping it’s out of order, even calling the operator asking her if she’s sure it’s not out of order?

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

A thousand years hence, every German will speak with awe of Stalingrad and remember that it was there that Germany put the seal on her victory.

I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.

I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can’t imagine someone else’s point of view.

Any man can be 62, but it takes a bus to be 62A.

Even if you live forty or fifty years in this world, and then die, you cannot take all your goods with you.

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.