Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.

Sex was a pleasurable form of exercise, like dancing.

I believe in prayer. It's the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.

Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.

We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.

I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.