Great Throughts Treasury

"Fame creates its own standard. A guy who twitches his lips is just another guy with a lip twitch - unless he’s Humphrey Bogart."

"Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity."

"All I really had was my talent. Without that I wouldn't be welcome at the White House."

"Bogart could have been color blind. He got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not."

"Everything Michael Jackson does on stage is exactly right."

"A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made."

"Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted."

"Fame comes with its own standard. A guy who twitches his lips is just another guy with a lip twitch - unless he's Humphrey Bogart."

"I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills and brought my grandmother from Harlem to live in it with me."

"I didn't hate being 60 as much as I had 50."

"I don't have many easy songs."

"I go to temple a lot less than I would like because when I do, people still look at me as if they think it's a publicity stunt."

"I had more clothes than I had closets, more cars than garage space, but no money."

"I had traveled 10 states and played over 50 cities by the time I was 4."

"I hadn't been in Vegas 20 minutes when I got word that the bookmakers were offering three to one that Frank wouldn't show for my wedding."

"Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens."

"Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man."

"Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves."

"Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before."

"I saw that my image was changing or fading. One of the reasons for taking a break from clubs was to be"

"I have to be a star like another man has to breathe."

"I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me."

"If you want to get known as a singer you hire five sexy chicks and let them fight over you onstage and for the cameras. That's publicity, man."

"The manic pursuit of success cost me everything I could love: my wife, my three children, some friends I would have liked to grow old with."

"The one thing you don't want is that stale sound when you've done a line so much you can't find a fresh approach to it. Drop it."

"The ultimate mystery is one's own self."

"There are certain romances that belong in certain cities, in a certain atmosphere, in a certain time."

"There are lines that I know are going to get a belly laugh, but after a few shows I get sick of hearing myself say them so I drop them."

"Ten million dollars after I'd become a star I was deeply in debt."

"The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody."

"What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent."

"You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear."

"You can be in this business 50 years and still not know anything about it."

"There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity."

"We can't answer King's assassination with violence. That would be the worst tribute we could pay him."

"To appear on the stage drunk, to have them leave there and remember me making drunken mistakes, that was death."