I never was a child.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

There’s no hypocrisy in Hell’s Kitchen.

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

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.