 There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people. |
| Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races. |
| 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. |
| No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer. |
| Elia Kazan understood my problems. He was able to bring out the very best in me. He gave me credit for my intelligence. |
| New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been. |
| Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show. |
| I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow. |
| Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me. |
| You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of a family. Just do your job right and your kids will love you. |
| 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. |
| I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever. |
| I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family. |
| I cannot help feeling I would have been happier with a husband and chidren of my own. |
| 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. |
