"Keep interested, read books, watch television and try to keep in touch with life and what people are doing, seeing and enjoying."
"Be active to your full capabilities."
"When I look on my mantelpiece and see these cards wishing me a happy 100th birthday, I can't believe it."
"I've liked country music for as long as I can remember, especially the songs of Dolly Parton. Her lyrics are similar to mine: simple, expressive, from the heart. Our voices are in the same kind of register, too."
"In the mid-1970s, I even decided to make my own country album. I put the idea to my record company, thinking we'd just go into the studio in the U.K. and make a novelty album. But instead, they suggested I go to Nashville. I was flabbergasted. I hadn't expected that at all."
"I'm a girl from East Ham."
"I used to go from place to place by tram. A shilling would take you all around London and the suburbs."
"They didn't like my voice at school."
"Singing in the jungle was very hot and very sticky, which was a bit hard going. I had a little piano, which they trudged around on the back of a lorry, hoping it would survive the journeys."
"When I was a toddler, I fell ill with diphtheritic croup and was taken to an isolation unit. One of my earliest memories is of being on my own in a tent surrounded by steaming kettles."
"Mum worked for a London dressmaker before she married. When she was forced to give up work after her marriage, she carried on dressmaking for people at home."
"Dad, who worked as a plumber, was a quiet and undemanding man who liked to laugh - and he was a very good dancer."
"Perhaps it is no surprise I became an entertainer because many of my relatives were natural performers. Dad, who had a fine pair of lungs, was master of ceremonies at East Ham working men's club in east London. I felt so proud when I saw him in his white gloves calling out the names of the dances."
"I was born with a passion for music."
"I have always managed to combine my family life and my career, but there came a point when I had to choose between a career in America and my family. I chose my family."
"In 1939, a newspaper ran a competition for the first load of boys off to war to pick their favourite singer. They chose me from my radio broadcasts. That's when I became known as the 'forces' sweetheart.'"
"I don't have a good memory, so learning all the songs for my TV performances was a real challenge."
"When I was 14 or 15, I was in a small troupe for teenagers, and I heard somebody say, 'Oh, she'll never get anywhere. She's too common.'"
"When I left school at 14, I thought I had better get a job. I got one in a factory where I sewed on buttons. It was so boring and we weren't allowed to talk or sing. I lasted a day."
"I don't like a cheater."
"You've got to be nice to people when you're on your way up, because you never know who you are going to meet on the way down."
"I always took things very seriously. Always have done."
"There was so little said about the Burmese war. The Forgotten 14th, they called them."
"I went goodness knows how long without a bath."
"I seem to have had quite a lot of pink dresses."