Sarah Vaughan

What was the competition? Well, I remember this Puerto Rican who came out in a short skirt and a gun.

There are notes between notes, you know.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.

There’s a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

I’ve discovered as I’ve grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when you’re a kid. It isn’t just a straight-forward fairytale.

Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.

You can never say you’re big – I don’t think you can ever take anything like that for granted.

[on Trump] Many people are happy to see him in office. Some are voters who think he’ll bring jobs back and shake up Washington; others are happy simply because he isn’t Hillary Clinton, and others of course are Vladimir Putin and Scott Baio. But, for the rest of us, we are faced with the same questions as a guy that woke up the day after a Vegas bachelor party, deep in the desert, naked, tied to a cactus and a dead clown, namely: How the f**k did we get here? and What the f**k do we do now?

Even when I was at ‘SNL,’ I didn’t do impersonations. I always wanted to be the kind of person who could do them – I always thought they were the coolest thing on the show – but I didn’t have any experience.

I haven’t had an interview in two years where I wasn’t asked about Bond!

I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it. I have the biting comment formed somewhere in the back of my head – like it’s in captivity. Sometimes people expect that I’m going to be tough. It’s not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

First of all, you have to understand that I’m like anybody else. When I hear my voice on a record I absolutely loathe my voice. I cannot stand my voice.

I’m probably in that next group of actors they call if Scarlett (Johansson) or Keira (Knightley) turns down a part. But I feel really lucky. To be a working actor is pretty incredible, because 99 per cent of actors are out of work. I know a lot of talented people who are better actors than me but haven’t had a break. It’s all down to timing and luck.

Someone stole my shoelaces once from my shoes. I still wear them and never put laces in them – they’re like my trademark shoes now!

Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don’t know who that’s attributed to. I think it’s Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.

I love being sexy; I’m never gonna stop being an exhibitionist

If I could trade places with anyone in the world it would be with someone who has lots of power like George Bush.

All I could think about was, ‘I just wanna blow him away. I wanna make him proud, because I really wanna sign with Timbaland and spend the rest of my career making music with Tim.’

Many people worry so much about managing their careers, but rarely spend half that much energy managing their lives. I want to make my life, not just my job, the best it can be. The rest will work itself out.