Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down..

Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels..

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk.

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance..

I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow..

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

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

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news..

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..

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'm not afraid to die. I'm looking forward to it. I know the Lord has His arms wrapped around this big sparrow..

Only those who are being burned know what fire is like..

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….

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

Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me..

Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races..

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family..

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

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

All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic..

My aunts lived on liquor and seldom felt like eating much. I don't know what's wrong about a kid stealing when he's hungry..