SAMMY DAVIS JR.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin.

Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity.

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.

When you lose a lover it's like getting a bad haircut. It grows back in time.

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

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

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

Marilyn and I were rumored to be an item. We were friends. Nothing more. Marilyn was one of the sweetest creatures that ever lived.

You don't swing where you sleep.

Though I love the luxury of the Waldorf Towers, room service there doesn't do soul food.

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

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.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

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

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

I wasn't anything special as a father. But I loved them and they knew it.

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

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

The success of the Rat Pack or the Clan was due to the camaraderie, the three guys who work together and kid each other and love each other.

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