I was in New York, miserable because I was working supper clubs but I wasn't expressing myself. I was really unhappy with my life. I saw Max Roach again and he told me I didn't have to do things like that. He made me an honest woman on the stage. I have been performing in that tradition since. I feel that I'm a serious performer now whereas then I wanted to be but I didn't know how.
Preposterous ass, that never read so far to know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of man, after his studies or his usual pain?
Poetry and music I have banished,
But the stupidity
Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
Makes no demand.
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.
Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.