All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

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

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 accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever.

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.

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