Quotes from Natalie Cole

My friend was on dialysis for six years before he got a new kidney. I was on dialysis for eight months. I'm almost not even the typical person who has kidney failure.

I've always loved Spanish. I love my father's Spanish records.

What's really important? That I'm an individual, I guess. I am an individual - a strong one, too. I'm Natalie Cole. I gotta be me.

When I did 'Unforgettable,' it wasn't appropriate for us to take liberties with that music. There had to be kind of a fine line between what had made it so great and the fact that a woman was singing it. We changed some of the arrangements, but not too much.

I'll never totally get away from being who I am, which first, to many, is the daughter of Nat King Cole, which became even more intensified with the 'Unforgettable' album.

It's remarkable what a new kidney does to your life. I have no complaints... I'm pretty amazed. I have been working on my stamina.

There's inevitably something missing when you grow up in this kind of an environment when your parents travel a lot. When your father is famous, you are looked at and expected of. There are standards you need to meet.

When you have put all your faith in man and continue to be disappointed, don't you hope there is something out of there that is not of human element?

As kids, we had no clue about the racial stuff that seemed to preoccupy adults. We just enjoyed our life as kids.

I look 10 years younger than I am. Unfortunately, sometimes I act like I'm 10 years old.

It's the same girl-who-has-everything story. You know, the one where she's insecure and scared and unhappy and has marriage problems and doesn't know how to handle stardom and screws up right and left and gets in with the wrong people and goes down the drain.

One thing that stays the same is my passion for music. Other than that, I've become more dedicated. I think that I really work much harder than I ever did when I first started at my craft; I'm more dedicated, and I have become a perfectionist.

There were so many groups that I had in college, but I was always the solo singer. But what made it so unusual back in the day was that I was a black girl playing with all these white musicians, and I was also singing rock music on top of it.

We have to stop rewarding bad behavior.

I couldn't breathe. I - I went into - literally, my kidneys stopped functioning. They stopped, you know, processing the fluid that was starting to build up in my body.

I was madly in love with Elvis Presley. Dad wasn't into it at all, at least not for himself as a performer. He used to say, 'Mr. Cole does not rock n' roll.'

I felt that if I'm serious about acting, I would like people to see me as an actress. It's less of a stretch if I'm singing, unless I'm playing a character who sings.

I'm an ordinary person under extraordinary circumstances.

Las Vegas has the type of audience - and they haven't changed since my father's days - they're still boring and bored. And there's only that handful of artists that they really enjoy and know how to respond to.

I've always adored my father's music, but ever since I'd started singing, whether it was while I was still a student at the University of Massachusetts or professionally, I avoided Dad's material.

I was going to college to be a doctor.

Being my dad's daughter has allowed me to do a lot of things that maybe another artist might not be able to do or wouldn't be necessarily embraced doing.

God was going to be to me the father that I never had, the father that I didn't have enough of, enough time with.

When you have put all your faith in man and continue to be disappointed, don't you hope there is something out of there that is not of human element?