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" Mercer was very clever. He knew the way Southerners spoke and put that into his lyrics. But in that whole era, you had the best. Harold Arlen was just fantastic. Cole Porter was better than anybody, and Gershwin was Gershwin, y'know. Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. "

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" I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that's rather silly. "

Tony Bennett

Today

Young

" To work is to feel alive. "

" My whole life has been singing and painting. I just do those two things. "

" I want to try to prove that at 100, I could sing as well as I was singing when I was 45 or 43. "

" I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different. "

" Sinatra invited me once to his birthday party in L.A. I was young, and I felt great about it. But when I got there, the Rat Pack were all in the kitchen laughing their heads off. "

Tony Bennett

Great

Birthday

" To me, life is a gift, and it's a blessing to just be alive. And each person should learn what a gift it is to be alive no matter how tough things get. "

Tony Bennett

Gift

Tough

" I had the greatest time of my life in England for a couple of years, and Robert Farnon made some of the best music I've ever been around. "

" It's a great thing that the United States has given the rest of the world - no other country has given such great popular music to the Far East and Europe. When I play those great countries, a lot of times, the audience starts singing the songs with me. They know them. They love them. "

" The United States created the best popular songs that were ever written, and from the 1920s to the 1940s, it was a renaissance period. It stopped in 1950. "

" Nobody has communicated with the public more than Lady Gaga. Ever. I trust the audience, and I'm very impressed. As far as they're concerned, she's part of their family. The only guy who ever did that was Bing Crosby, years ago. "

" When you hear a great two-track of a performance in Carnegie Hall, let's say, it sounds like you're right there at that moment. It's true to reality. And the closer it gets, once it gets too technical, it becomes very tinny to hear notes. It doesn't sound right. It has to be natural. "

" I've been so fortunate because I never really had ups and downs as far as my career. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I've been sold out all over the world. "

" My whole premise has been, right from the beginning, that it would take me a lifetime to learn to explain myself as an artist. As you grow older, you learn what to do and what to leave out. You kind of simplify your work and get the same thing done with fewer strokes. It's pretty interesting to me. "

Tony Bennett

Work

Myself

" The singers who are the most honest are the ones who become immortalized. "

" I get up, and boy, I can't wait to paint and study music and keep learning. I just love it. "

" I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today. "

" I loved my mom so much because she had to work on a penny just to put food on the table... During the Depression in the United States, everybody had a tough time. And I was so hurt because she was crying that she didn't have any food for us for Thanksgiving. "

" I'll never retire. "

Tony Bennett

Retire

Never

" For many years, I've always been attached to what they call the Great American Songbook, and Kern was a great leader of that because he had the classical training of Europe. He impressed all the greatest composers, like Cole Porter and Gershwin. They couldn't believe he was writing the songs he was writing. "

" I'll call it a day when I die. It's a wonderful occupation for me. I've never worked a day in my life. "

" I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world. "

" Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me. "

Tony Bennett

Life

My Life

" Fame comes and goes. Longevity is the thing to aim for. "

" I've been very fortunate. I'm doing what I love, and I'm getting away with it, you know? "

" I've never worked a day in my life. "

" I'd like to prove that if you take care of yourself, you can actually not regret the fact that you've become an old-timer, but you can just still improve and actually get better. "

" I still get a little nervous before performing. You don't want to forget a lyric; you don't want to make a mistake. I still get butterflies. You can try to judge an audience, but you can only really judge things by the applause. "

" I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing. "

Tony Bennett

Job

Life

" As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn. "