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 have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.

After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.

I know the most terrible thing that can happen to a woman. That is the gang-up. Men put you to sleep with their drops and one man after another goes in and takes you.

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

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

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