I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.

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Black women . . . work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going. . . . They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.

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But when you come from a large, wonderful family, there's always a way to achieve your goals.

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My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.

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I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened.

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Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.

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I tell them that the most important aspect is to be yourself and have confidence in yourself.

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I don't consciously try to be a role model, so I don't know if I am or not. That's for other people to decide.

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My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.

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What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.

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