Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.
I sing and dance. That's my job.
I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business. ' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book. '
Haters are going to hate.
When I get some budding young comic who'll come up to me and say, 'What was it like to do it in those days?' I try to be as gracious to him as Stan Laurel was to me.
Otherwise, everything got better and better, just one surprise after another. And that's why I wrote the book about a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and just luck.
Sing like nobody can hear you, dance like nobody can see you, and love like you've never been hurt.
When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.
As I said this year, I didn't try to put any pressure on me by setting high goals or anything, I just want to make sure that every single time I'm out there on the court I do my best, I give 100%, and see where it's going to end up next year.
Wear an unusual accessory to complete your outfit.
I've always considered myself a failure: I feel I've never done anything wholly right. [. . . ] Everybody will tell you, "Oh no, how can you say that, because ten thousand people clap you on a night?" But part of that is reflex action and part of it is because you're reasonably good. But if you're great, that's a different thing.