Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.

Tony Bennett

To me, life is a gift, and it's a blessing to just be alive. And each person should learn what a gift it is to be alive no matter how tough things get.

Tony Bennett

Life Us Tough

It sounds so simple, but if you just be yourself, you're different than anyone else.

Tony Bennett

Yourself Yours Your

I love entertaining people; I strive to make them feel good, and they make me feel wonderful. To explain it simply, I like what I do, and my ambition is to get better as I get older. That's really what I'm all about.

Tony Bennett

Love Good Wonderful

I've never worked a day in my life.

Tony Bennett

Work Life Worked

Nobody has communicated with the public more than Lady Gaga. Ever. I trust the audience, and I'm very impressed. As far as they're concerned, she's part of their family. The only guy who ever did that was Bing Crosby, years ago.

Tony Bennett

Trust Family Art

I have grown to appreciate the power of believing in myself and of always having faith in myself. I rarely look back; instead, I always look forward. There is so much of life that we miss when we wallow in regret.

Tony Bennett

War Power Life

Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you.

Tony Bennett

You Tim Thinking

Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.

Tony Bennett

Music Life Wit

I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.

Tony Bennett

You Wearing Wear

Sinatra invited me once to his birthday party in L.A. I was young, and I felt great about it. But when I got there, the Rat Pack were all in the kitchen laughing their heads off.

Tony Bennett

Great Birthday Art

No matter what age you are, there's a lot of room for learning.

Tony Bennett

Learning Age You

My whole premise has been, right from the beginning, that it would take me a lifetime to learn to explain myself as an artist. As you grow older, you learn what to do and what to leave out. You kind of simplify your work and get the same thing done with fewer strokes. It's pretty interesting to me.

Tony Bennett

Work Time Life

I get up, and boy, I can't wait to paint and study music and keep learning. I just love it.

Tony Bennett

Music Love Learning

The singers who are the most honest are the ones who become immortalized.

Tony Bennett

Who T Singers

I study nature, and I realize that no matter how much you learn, you can't top nature.

Tony Bennett

Nature You Top

Lady Gaga is the Picasso of the entertainment world. She's very intelligent.

Tony Bennett

Men World Very

Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.

Tony Bennett

Art Whatever Wanted

I loved my mom so much because she had to work on a penny just to put food on the table... During the Depression in the United States, everybody had a tough time. And I was so hurt because she was crying that she didn't have any food for us for Thanksgiving.

Tony Bennett

Work Time Thanksgiving

Mercer was very clever. He knew the way Southerners spoke and put that into his lyrics. But in that whole era, you had the best. Harold Arlen was just fantastic. Cole Porter was better than anybody, and Gershwin was Gershwin, y'know. Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole.

Tony Bennett

Art You Win

Fame comes and goes. Longevity is the thing to aim for.

Tony Bennett

Thing Thin T

Gaga is a gorgeous singer, and when she sings a great ballad, I get goose bumps.

Tony Bennett

I've been so fortunate because I never really had ups and downs as far as my career. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I've been sold out all over the world.

Tony Bennett

I take care of myself. I work out three times a week. I have a trainer, and we just work out for an hour.

Tony Bennett

I still feel that I can get better somehow. And I search for it all of the time.

Tony Bennett

When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.

Tony Bennett

When Sinatra said, 'For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer I've ever heard,' it changed my career completely. He was my best friend, and I was his best friend... but I was never part of the Rat Pack.

Tony Bennett

I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.

Tony Bennett

I still have a lot to learn. I'm concentrating on learning a lot more about music.

Tony Bennett

As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn.

Tony Bennett

I've been very fortunate. I'm doing what I love, and I'm getting away with it, you know?

Tony Bennett

The young people look great on television. They're youthful and have a lot of zip and energy, but when you see them live, they can only do about 20 minutes because they haven't got the training to hold an audience for an hour and a half or so.

Tony Bennett

I lived for 15 years in Los Angeles, and I still can't believe that the handsomest man in the world, Cary Grant, and the greatest performer in the world, Fred Astaire, and Johnny Carson, one after another - they were all in my home at different times. I celebrated my 50th birthday with them. Unforgettable.

Tony Bennett

I'd like to prove that if you take care of yourself, you can actually not regret the fact that you've become an old-timer, but you can just still improve and actually get better.

Tony Bennett

The United States created the best popular songs that were ever written, and from the 1920s to the 1940s, it was a renaissance period. It stopped in 1950.

Tony Bennett

To work is to feel alive.

Tony Bennett

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.

Tony Bennett

I want to try to prove that at 100, I could sing as well as I was singing when I was 45 or 43. I'd like to prove that if you take care of yourself, you can actually not regret the fact that you've become an old-timer, but you can just still improve and actually get better.

Tony Bennett

Every day feels like just starting out because I still have so much more to learn.

Tony Bennett

I still get a little nervous before performing. You don't want to forget a lyric; you don't want to make a mistake. I still get butterflies. You can try to judge an audience, but you can only really judge things by the applause.

Tony Bennett

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.

Tony Bennett

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Tony Bennett

More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform.

Tony Bennett

My whole life has been singing and painting. I just do those two things.

Tony Bennett

If something is good, it's always good. You don't have to change it.

Tony Bennett

Never treat the audience disrespectfully.

Tony Bennett

I was possessed with a wonderful example of my Italian American family. They would come over and join us every Sunday, all my aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, and I would sing for them.

Tony Bennett

I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was.

Tony Bennett

Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19.

Tony Bennett

I'll never retire.

Tony Bennett

Every show is different. The public has always been nice to me. I'm fortunate that way.

Tony Bennett