My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.

music became my refuge and then my salvation.

Count Basie isn't just a man, or even just a band. He's a way of life.

The naked female body is treated so weirdly in society. It's like people are constantly begging to see it, but once they do, someone's a hoe.

It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. Carry it by the comfortable handles of gratitude for what's positive and that it is not worse, rather than the uncomfortable edges of bitterness for the negatives and that it is not better.

I thought of singing and acting as a living-making. I was able to take care of myself and a few of my friends.

You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way. But the slanting process is so subtle that you frequently don't realize how you're being slanted until very late in the game.