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

Twenty-five years is a long time for a girl to live out of a trunk, and after looking over a few houses, I fell in love with one in Southwest Los Angeles.

New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been.

The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.

The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.

Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.

I wondered what I would do if I didn't have my God to turn to and be able to read the Book He had divinely inspired.