A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made.
Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity.
All I really had was my talent. Without that I wouldn't be welcome at the White House.
Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.
Being in public with May and the children was too heavy. I was irreversibly tuned in to everyone around us.
Bogart could have been color blind. He got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not.
Brilliant. I spend a lifetime making myself recognizable, and I put on a wig to look like my wife. Desperation was my producer.
Duke Wayne was politically a conservative but he was not a racist.
During three decades, along all the highways of my youth, Frank had always been there for me.
Everything Michael Jackson does on stage is exactly right.
Fame comes with its own standard. A guy who twitches his lips is just another guy with a lip twitch - unless he's Humphrey Bogart.
For days I lay in bed thinking, Maybe God is finished with me, now get out of here.
For no reason I was aware of, in Paris I just wanted to get drunk.
Friends of mine in the police department told me that Manson intended to kill two or three well-known black people and I was on his list.
From the beginning Dean had less enthusiasm for the tour than Frank and I. Losing Dean Paul had shattered him.
God brought me to where I was standing. Now it was up to me.
How can you figure life, or plan it?
I believed in Bobby Kennedy. Campaigning for him was an attempt to give back something to this country that has given me so much.
I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills and brought my grandmother from Harlem to live in it with me.
I can't see the people out front. The lights cover them after the first three or four rows. But I feel them, I hear them. From the back of the room I can hear.
I couldn't believe I was going to spend the rest of my life fighting with people who hate me when they don't even know me.
I couldn't imagine myself walking out of the hospital, let alone standing on a stage performing for 2,000 people, doing jokes and love songs with a burned-out liver.
I didn't hate being 60 as much as I had 50.
I don't have many easy songs.
I go to temple a lot less than I would like because when I do, people still look at me as if they think it's a publicity stunt.
I got a call from London inviting me to play the Royal Command Performance.
I had more clothes than I had closets, more cars than garage space, but no money.
I had no doubt that alcohol was poison for me, but I missed that marvelous little buzz.
I had traveled 10 states and played over 50 cities by the time I was 4.
I hadn't been in Vegas 20 minutes when I got word that the bookmakers were offering three to one that Frank wouldn't show for my wedding.
I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.
I looked in the mirror and saw my father's face on my body.
I needed to get the screen impact for exposure.
I saw that my image was changing or fading. One of the reasons for taking a break from clubs was to be missed-not forgotten.
I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.
I wasn't anything special as a father. But I loved them and they knew it.
I yearned for what Frank and I had had. The pity was, the kid and his idol were getting older and there was little time to waste.
I'd be up until daylight and be a basket case for the performance. I was accustomed to feeling terrible every morning.
I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me.
If you want to get known as a singer you hire five sexy chicks and let them fight over you onstage and for the cameras. That's publicity, man.
In my most swinging mood, in the back of my mind, no matter how gin-soaked it is, I always have an awareness of danger.
In the old days we were all thrown together in the one hotel where black performers were allowed to stay.
In Vegas and at Harrah's, those places are wonderful, but insular.
Jimi Hendrix died of an overdose in London. I'd been with him two days before.
Let's never pat ourselves on the back that we've got all them theatrical smarts.
Marilyn and I were rumored to be an item. We were friends. Nothing more. Marilyn was one of the sweetest creatures that ever lived.
May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin.
Michael Jackson only eats two carrots for breakfast and doesn't eat at all on Tuesdays.
Most orgies that you go to, I have found, most of it is sad. All that wildness, all those laughs were like the shining silver and gold paper on packages, but there was nothing inside.
Most performers don't have that rapport with the audience. They aren't that honest.
My home has always been show business.
My hope was that some kid would think I was hip. I'd get stoned every day.
My new car was in front of the door, a Cadillac Brougham, the best, most expensive American car built.
Part of my life was fun, the professional part, often that was a lot of fun.
Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens.
Part of the charm of Europe is that once you are something special you remain something special.
Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man.
Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves.
Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before.
Strange thing, videotape, sitting in a dark room and looking at the ghost of Christmas past.
Ten million dollars after I'd become a star I was deeply in debt.
The Candy Man was by far the biggest single I ever had.
The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.
The fear of losing success begins when you become entrenched with it. In my case it became an obsession.
The manic pursuit of success cost me everything I could love: my wife, my three children, some friends I would have liked to grow old with.
The one thing you don't want is that stale sound when you've done a line so much you can't find a fresh approach to it. Drop it.
The streets were barricaded with wooden horses. We walked. Not aggressively. Solemnly. Three thousand of us. A way of life was coming to a close.
The success of the Rat Pack or the Clan was due to the camaraderie, the three guys who work together and kid each other and love each other.
The ultimate mystery is one's own self.
There are certain romances that belong in certain cities, in a certain atmosphere, in a certain time.
There are lines that I know are going to get a belly laugh, but after a few shows I get sick of hearing myself say them so I drop them.
There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.
Though I love the luxury of the Waldorf Towers, room service there doesn't do soul food.
To appear on the stage drunk, to have them leave there and remember me making drunken mistakes, that was death.
We can't answer King's assassination with violence. That would be the worst tribute we could pay him.
What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent.
When did it start and when did it end? When did Haight-Ashbury and love beads turn into the haven of homosexuals?
When Liza Minelli was a child, she used to sit on my lap and call me Uncle Sammy.
When the applause ended and the curtain fell and the lights went on, what could I do then?
When you lose a lover it's like getting a bad haircut. It grows back in time.
With an ocean between you and your European friends, you have to keep them in your heart.
Work was the great lifesaver. You'd go to bed because in the morning you had to go back to work.
Would it be better if I'd married a Negro woman? Would they treat my child any better? Erect fewer barriers?
You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.
You can be in this business 50 years and still not know anything about it.
You don't swing where you sleep.
You never know about the public. If I had to sing every song, do every joke, every trick that I knew, they were going to like me.
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