1. “You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.”
2. “We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.”
3. “Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.”
4. “Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.”
5. “I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.”
6. “Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.”
7. “I could always open shows, perform through the middle and close shows.”
8. “I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.”
9. “All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.”
10. “All my life I’ve been prejudiced against wealthy people.”
11. “When you dominate other people’s emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay and heavily, for that privilege.”
12. “We miss a lot in life because we don’t know when to quit, what to leave out.”
13. “Only those who are burned know what fire is like.”
14. “I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there’s something in me that prevents me from handing it out.”
15. “I have reason to be shy. I’ve been hurt plenty.”
