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" 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. "

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" I have grown to appreciate the power of believing in myself and of always having faith in myself. I rarely look back; instead, I always look forward. There is so much of life that we miss when we wallow in regret. "

" In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him. "

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

" If music sounds dated, it means it wasn't very good in the first place. "

" The young people look great on television. They're youthful and have a lot of zip and energy, but when you see them live, they can only do about 20 minutes because they haven't got the training to hold an audience for an hour and a half or so. "

" I'll never retire. "

" 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. "

" Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you. "

" 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. "

" When Sinatra said, 'For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer I've ever heard,' it changed my career completely. He was my best friend, and I was his best friend... but I was never part of the Rat Pack. "

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

" I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was. "

" I still feel that I can get better somehow. And I search for it all of the time. "

" To work is to feel alive. "

" I was taught never to compromise: to never sing a cheap song. I never look down at the audience and think that they are ignorant or think that I'm more intelligent than they are. To think otherwise is totally incorrect and runs contrary to everything I was raised to believe. "

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

" I lived for 15 years in Los Angeles, and I still can't believe that the handsomest man in the world, Cary Grant, and the greatest performer in the world, Fred Astaire, and Johnny Carson, one after another - they were all in my home at different times. I celebrated my 50th birthday with them. Unforgettable. "

" When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If something is good, it's always good. You don't have to change it. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform. "

" Performers should really go to the best schools, like Lady Gaga, you know, she went to NYU and had great teachers... It's best to really study your technique as much as you possibly can so you can have a long career instead of a quick one that's a failure. "

" No matter what age you are, there's a lot of room for learning. "

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