Tony Bennett Quotes - Page 2

I left my heart in San Francisco, high on a hill, it calls to me. To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars, the morning fog may chill the air, I don't care. My love waits there in San Francisco, above the blue and windy sea, when I come home to you, San Francisco , your golden sun will shine for me.

We're in an era where the demand is for immediate hits that are destined to become obsolescent. Six months later, everyone forgets the artist and the tune. It's become like a con job. Producers, engineers, lawyers and accountants all make money, but the artists don't.

I have been very fortunate to have been able to make a living from what I love to do best - performing and singing for people.

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

I consider myself a method singer, not a method actor. I applied method acting to singing.

It's really quite a situation. It's ridiculous. I make $200,000, $300,000 a night. For years I was working little dives, and if I got $700 a week, I'd say, "Wow, I'm really cooking.

I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.

I don't disrespect the audience. I only sing very well-written, intelligent songs.

I try to tell the story about the song with the believability that I've lived it myself and I understand what it's all about.

I attended the High School of Industrial Arts and studied with many great artists as painting is something that you never stop learning about. Actually, in high school there was a time that I was thinking about just concentrating on painting and I asked my music teacher, Mr. Sondberg, for advice and he encouraged me to stick with the music as well. So all my life I have been singing and painting.

I think in all of the arts there are just certain people that have a gift. I think it's a certain spirituality, it's a God-given gift that just certain individuals have.

The biggest message I've given our team, and I think it's really important, is first of all, no one can take away what happened last year. It's obviously a fun year, a terrific year. But I think a big mistake would be to try to compare themselves or ourselves to last year's team. I think the key really is, and I told them this: for you as a group, you're a different team.

What I really search for is something that I really love hearing, something that's my own private game: If I find a song I really like, I try to do a definitive version.

Every city I go to is an opportunity to paint, whether it's Omaha or Hawaii.

I'd like to have every gentleman and lady in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs. So they have to get it through a doctor, not just some gangsters who sell it under the table. Let's legalize drugs like they did in Amsterdam. No one's hiding or sneaking around corners to get it. They go to a doctor to get it.

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 plan to do my next two albums with Lady Gaga . She is quite a talent.

It helps to know there is going to be continuity.

I've been so fortunate because I never really had ups and downs as far as my career. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I've been sold out all over the world.

I have to say I owe my career to the master composers of the Great American Songbook who have written such high-quality songs - the best popular music ever composed.

I have a very strong passion to sing and paint. I'm really a student.

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

Just give a drum roll, announce my name & I come out & sing. I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.

Intimate singing had a wonderful style in the '30s and '40s. It came out of Broadway and the jazz of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. But Sinatra created the best romantic era that we've ever had.

That song helped make me a world citizen. It allowed me to live, work and sing in any city on the globe. It changed my whole life.