I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?

Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

How can you sing of Amazing Grace? How can you sing prayerfully of heaven and earth and all God's wonders without using your hands?

You're blessed if you have the strength to work.