Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.
People were very protective of me. Overly so. I was in the industry for a long time before I had any idea of what drugs people were doing.
I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping.
I like to move around. I travel. I’ve driven across country by myself.
I didn’t think I had much of a following in the south. I thought I was anonymous down there so I kept to the south. I found in certain pockets that I was quite recognizable, and I just hit a wig store.
I never really wanted to be a star. I didn’t like entering a room with all eyes on me. I still don’t really like the attention of a birthday party.
I prefer Christmas, which is everybody’s holiday. It’s just my nature. I don’t like to be zeroed in on en masse.
You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won’t even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out.
I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities.
Musically, I don’t think I’d ever dry up. I trust my musical invention.
I got in before SoHo was SoHo. It was just Little Italy when I was in there. It’s still off the touristy track. It’s just away from the Saturday action, the crowds and everything. It’s too expensive. It’s insane. You’ve got to be a billionaire to live on Manhattan now.
Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral.
Rolling Stone hates me. They must have an editorial policy to do me in for many years.
Lazy reviewers look up other people’s reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.
I’m an individual, and an individual can’t follow and doesn’t want to lead.
I have a tremendous joie de vivre... alternating with irritability of course.
That’s a woman-hating scene.
I never saw a sky so green, never so blue.
It’s just that I suffer very eloquently.
You’ve got to shake your fists at lightning now. You’ve got to roar like forest fire.
And the seasons they go round and round.