We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.
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.
There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
It has been an ache and a joy both to look over this big shoulder of mine at all my yesterdays.
We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.
I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.
Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.
You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.
I learned early in life not to judge others. We outcasts are very happy and content to leave that job to our social superiors.
I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.
Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
I'm not afraid to die. I'm looking forward to it. I know the Lord has His arms wrapped around this big sparrow.
I wondered what I would do if I didn't have my God to turn to and be able to read the Book He had divinely inspired.
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.
There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in 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.
Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.
Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.
