New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been.
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 found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.
There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.
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.
I could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.
I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
I have no acting technique I act instinctively. That's why I can't play any role that isn't based on something in my life.
When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.
My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
What impressed me most about New York were its huge apartment houses.
What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.
Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.
Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.
If I wanted pity, I got it because I'm illegitimate. And when I didn't want it I was mean and nasty.
