Shirley Bassey

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

I think you have to leave a lot to the imagination!

I’ve found happiness in my work, but not in my private life. I had to take from my private life to make my public life successful. I had to make a lot of sacrifices. I was happy in Cardiff. I had a great time. Every Thursday there was a factory club; darts, dancing. I was happy until success entered my life, and then it was all downhill. Success spoilt me. It took away my happiness. My success became a barrier with my family. They couldn’t relate to me, and I couldn’t relate to them.

Who can wear the skimpiest outfit? I mean come on. These young girls are talented singers, they don’t need that, but they feel they have to be in competition to have the least covering. That’s the saddest thing.

It’s hard for a man to live with a successful woman – they seem to resent you so much. Very few men are generous enough to accept success in their women.

No wedding bells for me anymore. I’ve been happily married to my profession for years.

I don’t know where to find a good guy. I just think that they’re around and I think you have to be good and at some point you’ll attract that. I really believe that. First, people should stop looking. The looking thing does not work. Just let love find you.

I wasn’t looking to be gay. I was quite upset when I discovered that was part of my life. I wished it would go away. But you can’t change who you are. And I tried to fight it in the beginning. And then I had a cancer scare in the mid-70’s. And that turned out to be a mistake, and I thought, ‘Life is too short.’

True friends stab you in the front.

Your experience will be a lesson to all of us men to be careful not to marry ladies in very high positions.

Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go to any length for it-risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself.

I probably didn’t handle things as diplomatically as I should.

No one is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.

I have had young fascinations but never love.

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well — he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

A lover cannot be chosen a la smorgasbord. A lover has to be chosen from soul-craving. To choose just because something mouthwatering stands before you will never satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that is what the intuition is for; it is the direct messenger of the soul.

From the first time I saw a picture of him, James Taylor was it — the ultimate Orpheus of all my fantasies.

Don’t confuse feelings with facts and don’t ignore facts when they come as feelings.

I don’t like anybody to be angry with me. I’d rather have friends.

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy-that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.

I think when you get married, it’s not a totally free ride – it’s not without its unglamorous periods and its fights and its angry noons and silent dawns or vice-versa.