Top 40 Barry Manilow Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I believe that we are who we choose to be. Nobody is going to come and save you. You’ve got to save yourself. Nobody is going to give you anything. You’ve got to go out and fight for it.”

— Barry Manilow

2. “Everything you say and do is having an impact on others.”

— Barry Manilow

3. “The public needs to know – they need to know as much about atrial fibrillation as they do about cancer and diabetes.”

— Barry Manilow

4. “Misfits aren’t misfits among other misfits.”

— Barry Manilow

5. “I’m still hungry. I’ve still got a million ideas. I’m still strong and ready to create.”

— Barry Manilow

6. “I think my music is like anchovies – some people like it, some people get nauseous.”

— Barry Manilow

7. “I am a musician. My passion for music has obliterated everything in its path for my entire life.”

— Barry Manilow

8. “QVC has been very good to me.”

— Barry Manilow

9. “What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That’s why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it.”

— Barry Manilow

10. “I’ve been up, down, trying to get the feeling again. All around, trying to get the feeling again. The one that makes me shiver, made my knees start to quiver.”

— Barry Manilow

11. “I come from nowhere Brooklyn, New York. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days Williamsburg is kind of a hip area, but when I grew up there, the taxi drivers wouldn’t even go over the bridge, it was so dangerous.”

— Barry Manilow

12. “Atrial fibrillation has been the low man on the totem pole and so were just trying to get more visibility about this particular disease and how dangerous this could be.”

— Barry Manilow

13. “Keep your family and old friends around you. That’s what I had done and that’s what saved my life when it came to being famous.”

— Barry Manilow

14. “My hair was slicked down with a part. But that was before I discovered the blow-dryer. Now I’m fabulous.”

— Barry Manilow

15. “Yeah, I’m old as the hills and you would think I’d be out to pasture someplace because I’ve done everything, but nothing has changed.”

— Barry Manilow

16. “I stay glued to my piano and my work. I don’t look up. I write, I produce, I do the next project, I do my job. I don’t look up, and I try to be kind. I try to be kind to people. That’s what I do.”

— Barry Manilow

17. “Sneakers are not my thing.”

— Barry Manilow

18. “Here’s proof that if you live long enough, anything is possible.”

— Barry Manilow

19. “I feel that after all those horrible reviews and jokes, I wasn’t crazy all these years to stand up for the music I believe in. This album has proven that somewhere in the human race, the human heart is still racing and breaking and I am so grateful.”

— Barry Manilow

20. “For a Jewish guy, I’ve recorded a lot of Christmas albums.”

— Barry Manilow

21. “Touring is a young man’s game, but after 30 years of it, I want to stay home.”

— Barry Manilow

22. “I was the Justin Bieber of the ’70s. Really, I was.”

— Barry Manilow

23. “Every few years, I go back into all the songs and I update them so that it never sounds like an oldies show. If you come to the shows, they’re full of muscle. ‘Copacabana’ sounds like it could have been released yesterday.”

— Barry Manilow

24. “I’ve always wanted to marry Elton John.”

— Barry Manilow

25. “My style of music is the great American songbook meets the pop world of the Seventies and Eighties.”

— Barry Manilow

26. “The melody seems to have gone to the country. The country music seems to still have melody and interesting lyrics. But pop music, you’ve got to really listen hard to somebody who’s doing a good melody and a good lyric.”

— Barry Manilow

27. “I think the people who are out there for fame get themselves in a lot of trouble.”

— Barry Manilow

28. “Whenever there was a choice between music and anything else, music won hands down every time.”

— Barry Manilow

29. “You know, when I did ‘American Idol’ the three times, I tried to tell these kids you have to tell the story of the lyric.”

— Barry Manilow

30. “No one person or material thing could ever come close to the feeling I get when the music is right.”

— Barry Manilow

31. “I keep reading about people who want to be famous – it’s not that they want to be great songwriters or great actors, they want to be celebrities. That is scary because you can be famous doing some really stupid things.”

— Barry Manilow

32. “You can’t possibly prepare for what happens to you the day you hit No. 1 and people treat you differently.”

— Barry Manilow

33. “There’s just no quiet in Vegas.”

— Barry Manilow

34. “I didn’t want to be treated like a ‘star.’ I fought it constantly, and I think I was rude.”

— Barry Manilow

35. “I couldn’t bear the road anymore. I’m sure that a lot of people who have been on the road a long time will say the same thing. After a while, waiting for bedroom service and planes – I wanted to go home.”

— Barry Manilow

36. “Fame is always a shock to the system; there’s no school to go to, there are no books to read, and when it hits you, it’s a surprise. You could be working for 10, 20 years and when it finally hits you, you get knocked down.”

— Barry Manilow

37. “I love any opportunity I have to make music.”

— Barry Manilow

38. “Everybody has to find out: who are you? What do you believe in?”

— Barry Manilow

39. “First of all, I’ve been having a wonderful run of luck with cover albums, songs I didn’t write. I had five pop cover albums and two Christmas albums, and they were all very successful.”

— Barry Manilow

40. “I never wanted to be a performer, that was not one of my goals. I wanted to be a musician and that was that.”

— Barry Manilow

41. “When it comes to me, I just write the most beautiful music I can, I do the best work I can, and then I hand it out there.”

— Barry Manilow

42. “My goal was always to be involved in music that would outlive me. And maybe that’s actually happening.”

— Barry Manilow

43. “I believe in my writing.”

— Barry Manilow

44. “You say something stupid and the next morning you’re in the headlines.”

— Barry Manilow

45. “These days, with ‘American Idol’ and all the other reality shows, young people become famous overnight, and that can be very difficult to handle, the way photographers follow you around and study your every move.”

— Barry Manilow