Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

My mother's wonderful. To me she's perfection.

My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You'll be singing for the world someday.

My mother had a rule, obviously, that I couldn't go across the street by myself, but I had to find a way of doing it.

My father really was not the dominant person who raised the family, it was my mother who raised the family.

Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light this world has ever known, which has endowed literature and the theatre with their greatest and richest themes: love, pity and humanity.