Tony Bennett

"Ive taken stuff from people, too. You know though, if you steal from one person, youre just a thief. But if you steal from everyone, thats research."

"Im not staying contemporary for the big record companies, I dont follow the latest fashions. I never sing a song thats badly written. In the 1920s and 30s, there was a renaissance in music that was the equivalent of the artistic Renaissance. Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and others just created the best songs that had ever been written. These are classics, and finally theyre not being treated as light entertainment. This is classical music."

"A lifelong liberal Democrat, Mr. Bennett participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965, and, along with Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr. and others, performed at the Stars for Freedom rally on the City of St. Jude campus on the outskirts of Montgomery on March 24, the night before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the address that came to be known as the "How Long? Not Long" speech. At the conclusion of the march, Viola Liuzzo, a volunteer from Michigan, drove Mr. Bennett to the airport; she was murdered later that day by members of the Ku Klux Klan."