When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away. Eventually I ran far away. It was to a place called France. Many of you have been there, and many have not. But I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country I never feared. It was like a fairyland place.

I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.

A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.

We've got to show that blacks and whites are treated equally in the army. Otherwise, what's the point of waging war on Hitler?

I have two loves: my country and Paris.