"If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks the fuck to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung."

"I don't like to talk about myself. I just like to sing."

"I guess I'm not the only one who heard their first good jazz in a whorehouse. But I never tried to make anything of it. If I'd heard Louis and Bessie at a Girl Scout jamboree, I'd have loved it just t…"

"I'm not a lady. I'm a woman."

"They tried to make me go to rehab, I said 'no, no, no.'"