There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.

I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.

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

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.

I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try.

I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.

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