The old Catholic parties hounded me with a Christian hatred from station to station, city to city, one stage to another.

The white imagination is sure something when it comes to blacks.

Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.

Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?

I was learning the importance of names - having them, making them - but at the same time I sensed the dangers. Recognition was followed by oblivion, a yawning maw whose victims disappeared without a trace.

Since I personified the savage on the stage, I tried to be as civilized as possible in daily life.

One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.