Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk

Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.

Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.

All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

Who hears music, feels his solitudePeopled at once.

Ah, I see. You don't know much about us and the unknown equals the barbaric, the primitive. Although it is you lot who are ignorant.

Your tummy, soft aswarm dough. I knead and knead, thenbake it with a nap.

It was a mistake of mine to tell the lads that this lot don't score too many goals - and statistically they don't - but then they go and score seven.

I have more eating memories than cooking memories and many memories of being in the kitchen - I was always attracted to the kitchen - but nobody ever wanted me to touch anything.

Nature did not put whales on this earth to splash kids while stuck in a pen.

When you do hit the gym, you should push yourself. This is what makes fitness phenomena so interesting.

With artists of my own generation there was at first no group identity - and never a clique.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

I always give the example, if you turn on the radio today, black radio, Lenny Kravitz is not black. Bob Marley wasn't black: in the beginning, only white college stations played Bob Marley.