“My recipe for life is not being afraid of myself, afraid of what I think or of my opinions.”

You don’t move just because you want to go from this point to that point – the body has to be using the words as well as you vocally use the words.

Having my animals or my children with me exorcises that feeling of not being wanted.

I do think that same gender partners should be able to be married. Why not? If you share a life together than who in the world should have anything to say about it?

Dr. Einstein was not successful in school, but he found something in the air from his own imagination and his own brain power, and look what he did.

I am the last of the Mohicans, the creme de la creme of cabaret.

Jewelry, to me, is a pain in the derriere, because you have to be watching it all the time.

Generally the whole entertainment business now is bland.

I used to love it when I walked down the street and construction workers would whistle.

I have to keep testing myself.

Even as a child, I found a way to survive.

I fight for other people better than I fight for myself.

In essence, I’m a sophisticated cotton picker.

I’m a dirt person. I trust the dirt. I don’t trust diamonds and gold.

I see them in my audience all the time, with the fur coat, a woman whose hand is always out front, or the two fingers are on the cheek to show her diamond. I don’t have anything against that.

When the people who are responsible for our country ask you a direct question, I expect them to accept a direct answer, not to be blackballed because you are telling the truth.

Aging has a wonderful beauty and we should have respect for that.

Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy.

When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.

Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.

The tension between standing apart, and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.

Being human, she suffered from this lack and did what she could to make up for it. If she passed the evening bent over a table in the library and later declared that she had spent that time playing cards, it was as though she had managed to do both those things.

So we’re talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people’s lives in history.

In a certain sense a writer is ‘selected’ by his subject – his subject being the consciousness of his own era.

Larry Bird is overrated in a lot of areas. … Why does he get so much publicity? Because he’s white. You never hear about a black player being the greatest.