Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.

There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.

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

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

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.

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

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of a family. Just do your job right and your kids will love you.

After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.

I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me.

The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.

The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.

Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.

I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try.

I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.

It has been an ache and a joy both to look over this big shoulder of mine at all my yesterdays.

When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.

I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.