I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.

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.

Beauty is like the storm. Beauty has its natural motions. A calmness of spirit signals its arrival. Its departure is marked by misery.

A misadventure is an act that has a safer, less self-detrimental, less interesting alternative. But you choose that act because you want to do something memorable and worthy of discussion.

This world today makes one by the day a recluse

Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations.

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.

The power of daring anything their fancy suggest, as always been conceded to the painter and the poet.

Depression might have chosen you, but you don't have to choose it back. Sometimes happiness comes with bootstraps, but so what? Pull 'em up. Choose joy.

I try to play what comes naturally at the moment and let it happen.

Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

There is some CO2-water vapor feedback. But it's not operating on a global scale. The modellers cannot accurately separate water vapour from the effects of clouds and rainfall.