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

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.

Generally the whole entertainment business now is bland.

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

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

People in general are used to seeing me as the naughty girl because that's what they've always cast me as.

I love to tease men with my legs.

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

I don't wear my political feelings on my sleeve. However, if I'm asked, I will answer honestly.

Just because you are different does not mean that you have to be rejected

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.

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?

You don't have to hit anybody on the head to be sexy.

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

A lot can be said with just a look, or the way the body moves. Each song is a different character. So each song takes on a different movement of the body. And the body has to go with the subject and the attitude that you have toward that subject.

I don't carry myself as a black person but as a woman that belongs to everybody. After all, it's the general public that made me - not any one particular group. So I don't think of myself as belonging to any particular group and never have.

I never identified with anybody. I have always been very sensitive about my color, because everybody called me 'yellow gal.' I was caught in between both sides - nobody wanted me. I love that my audience is there, but I always feel as though I have to fend for myself.

I think it's fun to look at people with big diamonds. 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.

This is where you see the truth of entertainment, because it is not edited. You see it on stage as it is happening. Even if we fall down or forget our words, it's a part of live entertainment.

The audience has always been my best director.

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

I was an illegitimate, well, I still am an illegitimate child.

If you're looking for immediate rewards, you're only looking for the money.

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

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

Whenever I walk out on a stage, I'm begging for affection.

I had almost three acres of land in Beverly Hills. And I had a big atrium of chickens because I love that feeling of being in the country and living from the soil.

I don't think I ever really got interested in theater.

I love men and I like to get their attention.

Live theater to me is much more free than the movies or television.

The biggest family in the world is my fans.

The stage floor was a stage of thin ice for me to tread. To hold my own or to sink through and die, never to be remembered.

The children of America are not rebelling for no reason. They are not hippies for no reason at all. We don’t have what we have on Sunset Blvd. for no reason. They are rebelling against something. There are so many things burning the people of this country, particularly mothers. They feel they are going to raise sons—and I know what it's like, and you have children of your own, Mrs. Johnson—we raise children and send them to war.

I used to teach dance lessons.

When the Batman TV series was taken to the silver screen, one of America's favourite sweethearts would don the mask and claws of Catwoman.

When I played Lady Day, I took Aba onstage with me as a joke. He started singing-in tune!-and the audience loved it.

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.

I am the original Material Girl.

In essence, I'm a sophisticated cotton picker.

The boys that were running away from America because they didn't want to get involved with the Vietnam War had come to me. They would tell me how they felt.

When my baby was born I had to know how to save her in case she fell in the pool or something like that. I went to one of these nursing places to learn how to take care of the child.

I'm still with that feeling that I am afraid of doing the wrong thing, because somebody is going to punish me.

I would like to be writing more because people are constantly asking me questions, and I write down what they are asking me.

I was trying to find out who my father was. They say that at that time, that if you are illegitimate, the father doesn't have to put his name down on the certificate.

I was invited to a luncheon with 49 other women to give my opinions about the problematic situation among young people. They wanted me to talk about why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America.

I am still confused because I still don't know who my father is. And so who is my mother? The feeling is still there.

Dallas is where Kennedy was shot, and that's where I was put in jail.

I sent my daughter 40 roses last November because I thought she was 40. And she laughed her head off. She is not going to be 40 until this year!

I am always trying to eat the right kind of foods that are going to keep me healthy.

I am supposed to be, according to what I am told, one of the children of the cotton plantation owner's sons. If I could prove that, I'd own the whole goddamn everything.