For me, it all started with Elvis. I mustve been six, maybe seven year — Elvis Presley

"As a single woman, I could always spot a handsome man. Elvis Presley was one of the prettiest, yes, prettiest and nicest people I ever known. Pictures and videos of him really did not do him justice. In 1969, when I opened at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and he had opened at the International, I once went to see my aunt Cissy Houston (a member of Elvis vocal backing group, the Sweet Inspirations), during one of their sound checks. Elvis was there and Cissy introduced me to him. He let me know he was a a fan of my recordings then had all the Vegas record stores place a photo of him inside of my albums. This he announced from the stage and added that anyone who bought any of my albums would find an autographed photo of him inside of it. That week I think I sold more albums in Las Vegas than I ever had. I will never forget this act of kindness. We lost an icon when he made his transition."

"Our childhood housekeeper kept us supplied with a handwritten list of records. And when our mom would go out shopping and say, “Kids, can I get you something?,” wed say, “You going by the record store? Here’s the list.” And sure enough, it was Jimmy Reed. It was Larry Williams. It was Ray Charles. All the good stuff. My sister and I played the sides off of those records. Wed turn those 45 rpm singles white. And I remember my mom taking us to see Elvis Presley and that kind of did it ... we had the music bug. And then my father took me down to a recording session at ACA, that was Bill Holfords place. And he put me in a chair and he said, “I’ll be in the office if you need me. Stick around because there are some musicians gonna make a recording session.” And I was kind of enjoying it, and who should walk in but B.B. King and his band. So between seeing Elvis and watching B.B. King record, it was carved in stone."

"I hate that I missed Elvis and I wish I would have had a chance to see him"

"Our sons name would be Elvis...."

"Ita highly profane parody of my song and therefore, I am telling my staff to call radio stations and demand the song be banned from airplay."

"Elvis Presley movies – Im a big Elvis fan – although I dont think you should feel guilty about pleasures."

"At one point a heated discussion arose over the possible interpretation of Lolita as a grandiose metaphor of the classic Europeans hopeless love for young, seductive, barbaric America. In his afterword to the novel Nabokov himself mentions this as the naive theory of one of the publishers who turned the book down. And although there cant be the slightest doubt that Nabokov did not mean to limit Lolita to that interpretation, there is no reason to exclude it as one of the novels many dimensions. The point, I felt, became obvious when one drew the line between Lolita as a delightfully frivolous story on the verge of pornography and Lolita as a literary masterpiece, the only convincing love story of our century."

"Lovely food, for rabbits, that is."

"One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved."

"[explaining to Ernie how April apologized to him] She just showed up at the factory, took off her coat, and begged me to take her. We made love in a way that Ive only ever seen in nature films."

"Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised."

"He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust — just uneasiness — nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a... a... faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him — why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself."