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

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 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.

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

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

We’re not thought of in terms of color because we are entertainers. We are there to entertain you not because we are black, white, pink, or green or gay or straight or because we are Catholic or Protestant.

Relationships can be rather uncomfortable for her. But, as Eartha Kitt, it’s fine. I can accept and reject any time I want to. Do I ever reject? Not really. Although people think I do!

In the ’50s, critics used to say I had a ‘dangerous’ act.

I have a great need for affection from an audience. I don’t know whether this is because I had such a tough life when I was a child.

I was a street dancer.

Innocence is one of the most exciting things in the world.

Maybe subconsciously I feel I was meant to work hard for a living.

Eartha Mae is very shy. She’s scared to be seen, scared of rejection and even afraid of affection.

Orson Welles was one of these people who was defying everything the doctors told him he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He was really enjoying himself when he was eating what he wanted to eat.

God changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls and coal into diamonds using time and pressure. He’s working on you, too.

The sun shines equally on diamond and charcoal, but the former has developed qualities that enable it to reflect the sunlight brilliantly, while the latter is unable to reflect the sunlight. Emulate the diamond in your dealings with people. Brightly reflect the light of God’s love.

I’ve found you at last like a diamond glowing high in the endless sky.

You can’t cry on a diamond’s shoulder, and diamonds won’t keep you warm at night, but they’re sure fun when the sun shines.

I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions.

By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?

No pressure, no diamonds.

Big girls need big diamonds.