Helen Reddy

It took so long to make it in America. The year I arrived was a bad year for women singers, the record company told me. So I starved. I lived in a hotel so dreadful I can't even talk about it.

Most of the people I know in show business don't need anybody pushing them at all. They're extremely aggressive.

I had a career for 25 years in Australia before I ever came to the United States.

My audience are the same people who bought my albums years ago. These people are now married, with their own homes, their own families. If I'm in concert, I get people now who bring their kids.

There is a wealth of twentieth century music that is being re-discovered by a generation that hasn't heard it.

To this day I get mail from women who say, I went to law school because of your song. But I would hate to think out of the wide spectrum of things I have done in my career, that's all I would be remembered for.

I worked with my parents on the stage in production numbers since I was 4, but I never really gave much thought to being a performer on my own until I was 12 or 13.

I was very strongly influenced by women's magazines and I really believed tha a woman could not be married and raise a family and have a successful career all at the same time.

I couldn't do anything. I'd work in a department store for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't hack it. I couldn't even type! I had no skills whatsoever outside of show business.

If you tell people your ambitions, they usually laugh at you. When I told my girlfriends when I was 12 that I was going to Hollywood, they all laughed. And here I am!

I think back and marvel that my ambitions were so small.

It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.

Three-quarters of the world's population doesn't have enough to eat!

I like music to soothe me.

I don't know if it's a sign of all the chaos that is happening out there or not, but I've lately craved the structure and order of classical music, the balance and symmetry.

A lot of women are turned off by the physical appearance of some of the first feminists.

I thought Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was one of the biggest pieces of crap that I've ever read in my life.

I don't think any one person is the cause of all of someone else's problems.

There is no magic person out there, no perfect human being out there waiting for you.

Stop living a day at a time and stop worrying about age.

If you had told me when I was 18 that I wouldn't have made it until I was 29, I would have said, Forget it.

I always believed that I could make it or I would never have spent so many years trying to get here.

I was looking for a husband, but meanwhile to survive, I had to work.

Depression, as far as I'm concerned, is just a waste of time.

If I have to, I can do anything. I am strong, I am invincible, I am Woman.