I wasn't a jazz player, but a classical musician, and I improvised arrangements of popular songs using classical motifs.

All the time, there was the weight of my community's expectations on my shoulders.

You get racism crossing the street; it's in the very fabric of American society.

I have to be composed; I have to be poised. I have to remember what my first piano teacher told me: 'You do not touch that piano until you are ready and until they are ready to listen to you.

I flirt all the time. I like men! I don't think we can do without them.

When I'm on that stage, I assume honor. I assume compensation, and I should.

What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message, which means using everything you've got inside you sometimes to barely make a note, or if you have to strain to sing, you sing.

My daughter is in more competition with me. I never wanted to be bigger than my mother or to challenge her.

I didn't get interested in music. It was a gift from God.

The protest years were over, not just for me but for a whole generation, and in music, just like in politics, many of the greatest talents were dead or in exile, and their place was filled by third-rate imitators.