"I'm trying to figure out, Chairman of what Board? People come up to me and seriously say 'Well, what are you Chairman of?' And I can't answer them." "I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle." "A friend is never an imposition." His last words: "I'm losing it". [Talking about Burt Reynolds]: "He is the one the ladies like to dance with and their husbands like to drink with. He is the larger-than-life actor of our times. He is gifted, talented, naughty and nice". "A fella came up to me the other day with a nice story. He was in a bar somewhere and it was the quiet time of the night. Everybody's staring down at the sauce and one of my saloon songs comes on the jukebox. 'One for My Baby,' or something like that. After a while, a drunk at the end of the bar looks up and says, jerking his thumb toward the jukebox, 'I wonder who he listens to?'" When Dean Martin walked out on The Together Again Tour "You can't put a gun to his head. He just didn't want to do it." "Nothing anybody's said or written about me ever bothers me, except when it does." "I'm next. I ain't scared, either. Everybody I ever knew is already over there." After the deaths of Sammy Davis Jr., Ava Gardner, Jilly Rizzo, and Dean Martin. On Elvis Presley during the 1950s: "His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac...It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people." On Ava Gardner "I love her, and God damn me for it." "You better get busy living, because dying's a pain in the ass." "There have been many accolades uttered about his talent and performances through the years all of which I agree to whole-heartedly, I shall miss him dearly as a friend." - On Elvis Presley's death in 1977. "There are moments when it's too quiet. Particularly late at night or early in the mornings. That's when you know there's something lacking in your life. You just know." [on religion] "I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels." "Recording with Billy May is like having a bucket of cold water thrown into your face. Nelson Riddle will come to a session with all the arrangements carefully and neatly worked out beforehand. With Billy you sometimes don't get copies of the next number until you've finished the one before. Billy and Nelson both work best under pressure. Billy May is always driving while Nelson has more depth, and with Gordon Jenkins, it's just plain beautiful and simple." - from an interview. "He is the most overrated actor in the world." - On Marlon Brando "No man's lifetime of work has better expressed the land of the free and the home of the brave. No man's lifetime of work has given proof to the world that our flag is still there. John Wayne is in truth a star-spangled man whom so proudly we hail." "For over half a century, Mr. Wayne has served honorably as America's symbol to the world of the highest morals and prudent standards of our society." On Don Rickles: "I like him. But that's because I have no taste." "In Hoboken, when I was a kid, I lived in a plenty tough neighborhood. When somebody called me a 'dirty little pig,' there was only one thing to do: break his head. When I got older, I realized you shouldn't do it [get even] that way. I realized you've got to do it through education...maybe with a few exceptions." "For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He's the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more." (1965) "I detest bad manners. If people are polite, I am. They shouldn't try to get away with not being polite to me." "I'm a performer. I'm better in the first take." "Don't tell me. Suggest. But don't tell me."