Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.

Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.

Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!

This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.

These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.