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.

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

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

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

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