Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.

If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.

I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.

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

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.

Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.

Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.