Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.

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

My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.

After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.

My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.

What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.

I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever.