'The Boss'

Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.
Bruce Springsteen

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.
Bruce Springsteen

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.
Bruce Springsteen

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.
Bruce Springsteen

Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.
Bruce Springsteen

From the beginning, I imagined I would have a long work life.
Bruce Springsteen

I always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children.
Bruce Springsteen

I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.
Bruce Springsteen

I didn't know if it would be a success-ful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter.
Bruce Springsteen

I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination. I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.
Bruce Springsteen

I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.
Bruce Springsteen

I have my ideas, I have my music and I also just enjoy showing off, so that's a big part of it. Also, I like to get up onstage and behave insanely or express myself physically, and the band can get pretty silly.
Bruce Springsteen

I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.
Bruce Springsteen

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.
Bruce Springsteen

I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.
Bruce Springsteen

I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.
Bruce Springsteen

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.
Bruce Springsteen

If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it.
Bruce Springsteen

In America everything's about who's number one today.
Bruce Springsteen

In the early years, I found a voice that was my voice and also partly my father's voice. But isn't that what you always do? Why do kids at 5 years old go into the closet and put their daddy's shoes on? Hey, my kids do it.
Bruce Springsteen

In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.
Bruce Springsteen

It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company.
Bruce Springsteen

It's always felt natural, because I'm generally very comfortable with people.
Bruce Springsteen

My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.
Bruce Springsteen

My only general rule was to steer away from things I played with the band over the past couple of tours. I was interested in re-shaping the Rising material for live shows, so people could hear the bare bones of that.
Bruce Springsteen

No, I always felt that amongst my core fans- because there was a level of popularity that I had in the mid '80s that was sort of a bump on the scale- they fundamentally understood the values that are at work in my work.
Bruce Springsteen

Plus, you know, when I was young, there was a lot of respect for clowning in rock music - look at Little Richard. It was a part of the whole thing, and I always also believed that it released the audience.
Bruce Springsteen

Talk about a dream, try to make it real.
Bruce Springsteen

The audiences are there as a result of my history with the band but also as a result of my being able to reach people with a tune.
Bruce Springsteen

The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
Bruce Springsteen

The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
Bruce Springsteen

The only thing I can say about having this type of success is that you can get yourself in trouble because basically the world is set open for you. People will say yes to anything you ask, so it's basically down to you and what you want or need.
Bruce Springsteen

The release date is just one day, but the record is forever.
Bruce Springsteen

This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.
Bruce Springsteen

When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.
Bruce Springsteen

When it comes to luck, you make your own.
Bruce Springsteen

Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.
Bruce Springsteen

Yeah, my son likes a lot of guitar bands. He gave me something the other day which was really good. He'll burn a CD for me full of things that he has, so he's a pretty good call if I want to check some of that stuff out... The other two aren't quite into that yet.
Bruce Springsteen

You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you're making those connections with your audience then they're going to go right along with it.
Bruce Springsteen

Your spoken voice is a part of it - not a big part of it, but it's something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what's otherwise difficult music.
Bruce Springsteen

Your success story is a bigger story than whatever you're trying to say on stage. Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.
Bruce Springsteen

"ELVIS"

A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favorite part of the business, live concerts.
Elvis Presley

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
Elvis Presley

After a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake.
Elvis Presley

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
Elvis Presley

Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.
Elvis Presley

From the time I was a kid, I always knew something was going to happen to me. Didn't know exactly what.
Elvis Presley

I did the Ed Sullivan show four times. I did the Steve Allen show. I did the Jackie Gleason show.
Elvis Presley

I don't do any vulgar movements.
Elvis Presley

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
Elvis Presley

I don't think I'm bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.
Elvis Presley

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.
Elvis Presley

I have no use for bodyguards, but I have very specific use for two highly trained certified public accountants.
Elvis Presley

I hope I didn't bore you too much with my life story.
Elvis Presley

I knew by heart all the dialogue of James Dean's films; I could watch Rebel Without a Cause a hundred times over.
Elvis Presley

I learned how important it is to entertain people and give them a reason to come and watch you play.
Elvis Presley

I like entertaining people. I really miss it.
Elvis Presley

I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I'm singing now is what makes the money.
Elvis Presley

I miss my singing career very much.
Elvis Presley

I never expected to be anybody important.
Elvis Presley

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.
Elvis Presley

I think I have something tonight that's not quite correct for evening wear. Blue suede shoes.
Elvis Presley

I was an only child, and Mother was always right with me all my life. I used to get very angry at her when I was growing up-it's a natural thing.
Elvis Presley

I was an overnight sensation.
Elvis Presley

I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line.
Elvis Presley

I'd just like to be treated like a regular customer.
Elvis Presley

I'll never feel comfortable taking a strong drink, and I'll never feel easy smoking a cigarette. I just don't think those things are right for me.
Elvis Presley

I'll never make it, it will never happen, because they're never going to hear me 'cause they're screaming all the time.
Elvis Presley

I'll stay in Memphis.
Elvis Presley

I'm no hillbilly singer.
Elvis Presley

I'm not trying to be sexy. It's just my way of expressing myself when I move around.
Elvis Presley

I'm so nervous. I've always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.
Elvis Presley

I'm strictly for Stevenson. I don't dig the intellectual bit, but I'm telling you, man, he knows the most.
Elvis Presley

I'm trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It's so easy to get turned.
Elvis Presley

I've been getting some bad publicity - but you got to expect that.
Elvis Presley

I've never written a song in my life. It's all a big hoax.
Elvis Presley

I've tried to lead a straight, clean life, not set any kind of a bad example.
Elvis Presley

It's human nature to gripe, but I'm going ahead and doing the best I can.
Elvis Presley

Just because I managed to do a little something, I don't want anyone back home to think I got the big head.
Elvis Presley

Later on they send me to Hollywood. To make movies. It was all new to me. I was only 21 years old.
Elvis Presley

Man, I really like Vegas.
Elvis Presley

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don't know why-the lyrics had no meaning.
Elvis Presley

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.
Elvis Presley

My movements, ma'am, are all leg movements. I don't do nothing with my body.
Elvis Presley

People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn't copy my style from anybody.
Elvis Presley

Rhythm is something you either have or don't have, but when you have it, you have it all over.
Elvis Presley

Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I can't help it.'
Elvis Presley

Since the beginning, it was just the same. The only difference, the crowds are bigger now.
Elvis Presley

That's why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I'm always the last one to leave.
Elvis Presley

The army teaches boys to think like men.
Elvis Presley

The closest I ever came to getting married was just before I started singing. In fact, my first record saved my neck.
Elvis Presley

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.
Elvis Presley

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.
Elvis Presley

The Lord can give, and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year.
Elvis Presley

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.
Elvis Presley

There are too many people that depend on me. I'm too obligated. I'm in too far to get out.
Elvis Presley

They put me on television. And the whole thing broke loose. It was wild, I tell ya for sure.
Elvis Presley

Those movies sure got me into a rut.
Elvis Presley

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.
Elvis Presley

Too much TV hurts movies.
Elvis Presley

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.
Elvis Presley

Until we meet again, may God bless you as he has blessed me.
Elvis Presley

Whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me.
Elvis Presley

When I get married, it'll be no secret.
Elvis Presley

When I got outta High School I was driving a truck. I was just a poor boy from Memphis, Memphis.
Elvis Presley

When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream.
Elvis Presley

"Mama" Cass Elliot

Honesty is all you need.
Cass Elliot

How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.
Cass Elliot

I was just a bumpkin. Just a country bumpkin. I had just come to New York from Virginia. Or was it Baltimore?
Cass Elliot

I've always been so apathetic. I figured, OK, maybe the world is going to fall down around me. Now I want to make a better world... that's motherhood.
Cass Elliot

If you really think you're right, you should tell it.
Cass Elliot

If you truly dig what you are doing, if you lay it out that way, nobody can not respond. That's what rock and roll is; it's relentless.
Cass Elliot

My role in the Mamas and Papas was basically just to sing.
Cass Elliot

There's so much talk about the drug generation and songs about drugs. That's stupid. They aren't songs about drugs; they're about life.
Cass Elliot

They're paying me an outrageous sum of money; $40,000 a week, which is totally silly.
Cass Elliot

When you're famous, you don't get to meet people because they want you to like them when they present themselves to you, and you don't see the real people.
Cass Elliot

Brian May (Queen Guitarist)

A good video can make all the difference.
Brian May

Astronomy's much more fun when you're not an astronomer.
Brian May

At the moment the Queen stuff does sell really well, but there's no guarantee it'll go on forever.
Brian May

Each gig should be unique. You're always treading that line between keeping yourself fresh and giving people something they want to hear.
Brian May

Einstein got most of the things right about black holes. I'm not an expert, I must admit.
Brian May

Every time I listen to Jeff Beck my whole view of guitar changes radically. He's way, way out, doing things you never expect.
Brian May

Everybody thought I was a bit of an eccentric for wanting to be out there looking at the stars, but I still do.
Brian May

For a time I didn't want to answer any questions about Queen. I'd like to be viewed as something alive and relevant, not some fossil.
Brian May

From the beginning of Queen there was such momentum that I never had any time to do anything else. My energy was 95% focused on the band.
Brian May

I despise the Lottery. There's less chance of you becoming a millionaire than there is of getting hit on the head by a passing asteroid.
Brian May

I don't surf the net in general. I have someone do it for me instead, because I find it sluggish.
Brian May

I don't think anybody comes close to The Beatles, including Oasis.
Brian May

I go through major crises every few months, but then I have great peaks of belief and creativity. I'm a weird kind of animal.
Brian May

I had this big thing about guitar harmonies. I wanted to be the first to put proper three-part harmonies onto a record. That was an achievement.
Brian May

I just want to be able to play as fast as my brain goes, and my brain doesn't go all that fast.
Brian May

I like to go for a walk or swimming or in the garden when I can. It's a busy kind of life, but I guess I'm lucky.
Brian May

I never took sheet music seriously. I could do better myself just by listening to other people and using my own intuition.
Brian May

I really thought I was pretty good before I saw Hendrix, and then I thought: Yeah, not so good.
Brian May

I spent 20 years of my life building up Queen, and now I'm spending years of my life trying to get away from it.
Brian May

I was actually perfectly happy when I had no money, which lasted right up until we had a hit with Killer Queen, in 1974. I never wanted for anything.
Brian May

I'm pretty basic as far as technique is concerned. I don't use many gadgets, and I like the sound my guitar makes, anyway.
Brian May

Mantovani was a great influence on me.
Brian May

Sanctions always hurt the poor, the weak, the children.
Brian May

The biggest emotion in creation is the bridge to optimism.
Brian May

The first nine albums there was never a Synthesiser, never any Orchestra. There was never any other player except us on the albums.
Brian May

The guitar has a kind of grit and excitement possessed by nothing else.
Brian May

The guitar was my weapon, my shield to hide behind.
Brian May

The Wedding March has a bit of a death march in it.
Brian May

There are a lot of things in Queen albums that you don't expect; that's why we threw them in.
Brian May

There are times when I flick through magazines and think I'm in danger of becoming a prisoner of my own hair.
Brian May

There is no way that you can ever really repeat something. I have this great belief that the magic of the moment can never be recaptured.
Brian May

There's nothing I'm embarrassed about.
Brian May

We do play to our audience. It's very important. You can't create music in a vacuum.
Brian May

Rita Rudner

A man will go to war, fight and die for his country. But he won't get a bikini wax.
Rita Rudner

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times.
Rita Rudner

I don't plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet.
Rita Rudner

I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine.
Rita Rudner

I know I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.
Rita Rudner

I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
Rita Rudner

I love to shop after a bad relationship. I don't know. I buy a new outfit and it makes me feel better. It just does. Sometimes I see a really great outfit, I'll break up with someone on purpose.
Rita Rudner

I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
Rita Rudner

I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for 36 hours. I don't even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.
Rita Rudner

I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the sunlight.
Rita Rudner

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.
Rita Rudner

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
Rita Rudner

In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk.
Rita Rudner

It wasn't that no one asked me to the prom, it was that no one would tell me where it was.
Rita Rudner

Marriages don't last. When I meet a guy, the first question I ask myself is: is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
Rita Rudner

Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at thirty-five. Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical joke?
Rita Rudner

Men who consistently leave the toilet seat up secretly want women to get up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night and fall in.
Rita Rudner

Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage - they've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
Rita Rudner

Most turkeys taste better the day after, my mother's tasted better the day before.
Rita Rudner

My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married and I didn't want him to.
Rita Rudner

My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands and two of them were just napping.
Rita Rudner

My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
Rita Rudner

My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.
Rita Rudner

My mother buried three husbands - and two of them were only napping.
Rita Rudner

Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them.
Rita Rudner

Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. Actually, it's quite the opposite: a woman having large breasts makes men stupid.
Rita Rudner

Some women hold up dresses that are so ugly and they always say the same thing: 'This looks much better on.' On what? On fire?
Rita Rudner

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
Rita Rudner

The time you spend grieving over a man should never exceed the amount of time you actually spent with him.
Rita Rudner

The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping up and down.
Rita Rudner

They usually have two tellers at my local bank, except when it's very busy, then they have one.
Rita Rudner

To attract men, I wear a perfume called "New Car Interior."
Rita Rudner

We've begun to long for the pitter-patter of little feet - so we bought a dog. Well, it's cheaper, and you get more feet.
Rita Rudner

When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always.
Rita Rudner

Richard Marx

And to any new fans we made along the way, I say... welcome to our party. It's just starting to get going.
Richard Marx

As a songwriter, there's nothing better than winning Song Of The Year. But I couldn't really celebrate, because it wasn't right. Luther wasn't standing next to me, to receive the award.
Richard Marx

But I'm just having fun playing and giving Botox injections to the older songs.
Richard Marx

But more importantly, I think he remembered how very close I was with my own dad, who had died in 1997.
Richard Marx

But once you have some success in one style, the business wants to lock you in that vein forever.
Richard Marx

Doing my own album provided me the opportunity to say whatever I wanted.
Richard Marx

I can't wait to front my band with these new songs and play for fans, but I've decided to keep my day job too.
Richard Marx

I didn't want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs.
Richard Marx

I don't think I've ever laid out a batch of songs that pick myself apart the way that these do.
Richard Marx

I fell off stage and bruised some ribs. The worst part was that the audience didn't realize I was gone.
Richard Marx

I have complete freedom, and there's no way to get pigeonholed or bored. What could be better than that?
Richard Marx

I love when people get songs wrong. I love when people take something from a song that's totally not what I intended!
Richard Marx

I really didn't have any plans to record prior to doing My Own Best Enemy.
Richard Marx

I think I do better when things are a little tougher.
Richard Marx

I think really what I'm saying is that I thrive on adversity.
Richard Marx

I understand that, but this disc shows the type of music that I've always liked and wanted to make.
Richard Marx

I'm happy, I would say that I'm one of the happiest people I know but I've certainly had periods of profound sadness, depression and heartache and those are the kind of things that are interesting to me to write about.
Richard Marx

I'm now so keenly aware that I have everything to prove and nothing to lose.
Richard Marx

I've always loved groups like U2 and Coldplay.
Richard Marx

I've never written a song that I thought was a hit.
Richard Marx

I've never, ever in my life enjoyed playing live the way I am now.
Richard Marx

In the past, there has always been so much pressure about carrying a show and promoting a record.
Richard Marx

It never ceases to amaze me that I get to do this for a living.
Richard Marx

It's funny; Luther and I have written many songs together, but we've never written songs in the same room.
Richard Marx

My joke, which isn't really a joke, is that there will be one of two tours: the tour for the album that does well, or the tour for the album that stiffs.
Richard Marx

One time Robert Plant was set to check into the same room after I checked out, so I removed every light bulb and ordered up a bunch of stinky cheese and put it under the mattress.
Richard Marx

People take songs so literally.
Richard Marx

So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.
Richard Marx

The only thing that's a little tricky about it is sometimes people assume that if it's a new song, it's a reflection of what you're feeling or going through now.
Richard Marx

When things are too easy I lose interest in them so I find ways to complicate them to get myself interested.
Richard Marx

David Copperfield

I'm just waiting for people to start asking me to make the rain disappear.
David Copperfield

Magic came very easy for me when I was a kid. When I was 8 years old I started doing it, and by the time I was 12, I was already published in magic books.
David Copperfield

No self-respecting gay guy would have ever made some of the hair and clothing choices I am still trying to live down.
David Copperfield

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.
David Copperfield