“Until things are brighter. I’m the man in black.”

We’ll all be equal under the grass, and God’s got a heaven for country trash.

You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.

I’m not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I’m thrilled to death with life.

There’s a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there’s a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.

Death and hell are never full, and neither are men’s eyes.

I knew that when I left there at the age of 18, I wouldn’t be back. And it was common knowledge among all the people there that when you graduate from high school here, you go to college or go get a job or something and do it on your own.

Stop your ears and close your eyes and try to find the face of love.

They’re powerful, those songs. At times they’ve been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.

A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat.

There’s no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.

The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I’ve got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.

It’s good to believe in yourself, but there are people out there who can make or break you.

It takes a real man to live for God-a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.

My arms are too short to box with God.

Love is a burning thing and it makes a firey ring.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

Today’s Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish.

Even as someone who’s labeled a conservative – I’m a Republican I’m black, I’m heading up this organization in the Reagan administration – I can say that conservatives don’t exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they’re welcome.

I think people are slowly realizing that don’t have to be looking in a mirror to enjoy something. And they’re realizing that watching a show with drag queens in it doesn’t make you gay any more then listening to rap makes you black.

For years, ‘Drag Race’ was gay people’s best kept secret. When I started doing drag, people didn’t know anything about it. Look at it now: it’s like it’s gone from black and white to IMAX.

You accuse me of black marketing, but which of you has not slept with me?

Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.

I want to be the black and white moment that flashes in front of your eyes, when you hum your favorite tune; your soul song.