I know the most terrible thing that can happen to a woman. That is the gang-up. Men put you to sleep with their drops and one man after another goes in and takes you.

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.

What is it that you contain? The dead, time, light patterns of millenia opening in your gut. What is salted up in the memory of you? Memory past and memory future.

My parents have a strong work ethic, but their attitude to life, their philosophy, is: 'whatever makes you happy.'

TV is all new to me because I came from features.

I had my young eyes opened by the impersonal blood and guts of news photography. I was running the gamut every low man on the totem pole runs - country clubs to mass murder.

If you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits.

Your success will have everything to do with how you perceive yourself, because how you perceive yourself is how others will perceive you, too.

As I would learn later in life, money makes you extremely handsome.

They may not use the word better. But they certainly believe that they'll go to heaven and Jews will not.

Musicians tell me, if what I'm doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

I was physically abused and I retaliated.