Quotes from Tony Bennett

If music sounds dated, it means it wasn't very good in the first place.

I don't sing operatically, and I sing very intimately, but I still do the scales, and I think in terms of intonation and making sure that I'm hitting the notes right on the head... and having it appear quite effortless.

As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn.

Every show is different. The public has always been nice to me. I'm fortunate that way.

Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19.

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

Sometimes the teacher would tell me that if you're singing a love song and you just don't feel it with a person or something you've experienced, just think of a dog or cat that you love.

Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you.

I take care of myself. I work out three times a week. I have a trainer, and we just work out for an hour.

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 know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Luckily for his audiences, Bennett doesn't tire of singing I Left My Heart. ... that song made me a world citizen. And when I do it, it always feels like the first time.

When Sinatra said, 'For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer I've ever heard,' it changed my career completely. He was my best friend, and I was his best friend... but I was never part of the Rat Pack.

I study nature, and I realize that no matter how much you learn, you can't top nature.

For many years, I've always been attached to what they call the Great American Songbook, and Kern was a great leader of that because he had the classical training of Europe. He impressed all the greatest composers, like Cole Porter and Gershwin. They couldn't believe he was writing the songs he was writing.

To me, life is a gift, and it's a blessing to just be alive. And each person should learn what a gift it is to be alive no matter how tough things get.

I was taught never to compromise: to never sing a cheap song. I never look down at the audience and think that they are ignorant or think that I'm more intelligent than they are. To think otherwise is totally incorrect and runs contrary to everything I was raised to believe.

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.

Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.

Sinatra invited me once to his birthday party in L.A. I was young, and I felt great about it. But when I got there, the Rat Pack were all in the kitchen laughing their heads off.

I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was.

I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.

The singers who are the most honest are the ones who become immortalized.

Gaga is a gorgeous singer, and when she sings a great ballad, I get goose bumps.