“I know that my fans want to know who I’m sleeping with, but it’s really none of their business.”

I listen to most everything that’s out there because I need to stay aware of what’s happening in the industry.

With the Supremes I made so much money so fast all I wanted to do was buy clothes and pretty things. Now I’m comfortable with money and it’s comfortable with me.

I even thought of adopting a child as a single mother.

I don’t like to have too many makeup artists around, so I always like to do my own.

What’s important for me is to give my daughters a well-rounded education and a mixture of people in their lives. They’ll make their own choices. I think they would be good in show business.

I really, deeply believe that dreams do come true. Often, they might not come when you want them. They come in their own time.

I really think I want to live in a lot of places.I don’t want possessions to hold me down.

My family called me a wiggle tail because I was a little skinny, wiry kid full of energy.

Being a parent is very important to me.

I want to live in Paris for a couple of years. I’m dying to do the Josephine Baker story. I really want to be there and do it. It’s certainly my intention to do it.

I just appreciate still having the longevity that I’ve had in my career.

I have three girls, and I say the same thing to them. I’m not involved in their careers because I’ve learned that it’s important for them to stand on their own two feet. They’ll feel better and prouder of themselves if they do.

The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, ‘What’s so great about Billie Holiday?’

If I’m with a man I’m soft and buttery.

It takes a long time to get to be a diva. I mean, you gotta work at it.

I don’t judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they’re a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person.

And knowing money is a root of evil, in Christian charity, he’d take away whatever things may hinder your salvation.

This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.

You know that you know nothing. Find out that knowledge.

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.

Human weakness is to desire to know what one does not want to know.

What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o’er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?

My heavens! I’ve been talking prose for the last forty years without knowing it.

There is a pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know.