If I don't have friends, then I ain't nothing.

I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.

Them that's got shall get, Them that's not shall lose. So the Bible says, And it still is news. Mama may have, Papa may have, But God bless the child that's got his own.

When you sing, always tell the truth.

I think I copied my style from Louis Armstrong. Because I used to like the big volume and the big sound that Bessie Smith got when she sang ... So I liked the feeling that Louis got and I wanted the big volume that Bessie Smith got. But I found that it didn't work with me, because I didn't have a big voice. So anyway between the two of them I sorta got Billie Holiday.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

So I asked him to play "Trav'lin' All Alone." That came closer than anything to the way I felt. And some part of it must have come across. The whole joint quieted down. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. When I finished, everybody in the joint was crying in their beer, and I picked thirty-eight bucks up off the floor. . . . When I showed Mom the money for the rent and told her I had a regular job singing for eighteen dollars a week, she could hardly believe it.