"I don't like to be told what to do. I like to do what I want to do."

"I never had a mother, never had a father, never had a home, I never had a husband. I just had me."

"I guess I'm not the only one who heard their first good jazz in a whorehouse. But I never tried to make anything of it. If I'd heard Louis and Bessie at a Girl Scout jamboree, I'd have loved it just t…"

"I don't believe in God. I believe in people."

"I've got to be me, and I can't be nobody else."