We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

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

We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.

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

I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.

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