I'm not afraid to die. I'm looking forward to it. I know the Lord has His arms wrapped around this big sparrow.

When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.

Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.

If I wanted pity, I got it because I'm illegitimate. And when I didn't want it I was mean and nasty.

When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.

Among Negroes it is a bad omen when someone knocks on the door of a house where a person has died.

I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.