We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.

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.

Like any other tool for facilitating the completion of a questionable task, rewards offer a "how" answer to what is really a "why" question.

Down deep in His innermost soul Christ carried an inexhaustible treasury of refined and heavenly joy.

Some things are too terrible to be true.

There is no single advantage a woman of truly enduring fascination can possess that is so splendid as speaking with a foreign accent, whatever her origin.

My biggest fear? My biggest fear would be turning into an inanimate object.

The heart of a friend gives out sufficient light for us in the dark to rise by.

Whom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me, knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story.

A bird only flies. It does not turn to another bird and ask, am I doing this right?

Life is lived in real places, and I shoot in real places.

Happy (if mortals can be) is the man,Who, not by priest but Reason, rules his span:Reason, to its possessor a sure guide,Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.