I got the message. All of us get the message, sooner or later. If you get it before it's too late or before you're too old, you'll pull through all right.

I'm proud of our court. It knocks back a lot of the propaganda the Communists put out about the way America treats her Negroes.

I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money.

I was a guinea pig for some hoodlums who thought they could hurt me and frighten me and keep other Negro entertainers from the South.

Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.

I ... started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.

The only sport I'm not interested in is horse racing. That's because I don't know the horses personally.