Top 56 Bessie's Quotes
#1. Honey," Bessie's mamma used to say, "politicians and judges and coppers are money-grubbing thieves. They'll screw you, and rob you, and win elections for doing it, but there's no way around them. Smile and pay the sonsabitches off." The
Mary Doria Russell
#2. I never saw so much life left in someone who had lived so much," said Bernice Latelle, a gospel singer who lived in Bessie's neighborhood and heard her at the Wander Inn. "I don't think anybody or anything could break that woman's spirit.
Chris Albertson
#3. It would be great to have Bach in one corner, Bessie Smith in another, John Lennon in another. That's what I'd ideally like. A studio of the dead.
Jools Holland
#4. There's nineteen men livin' in my neighborhood, Eighteen of them are fools and the one ain't no doggone good.
Bessie Smith
#5. I thought you were makin' small talk about the weather."
"When have I ever made small talk with you?"
"When we first met."
"No, I made small talk with Bessie, your shotgun, until you removed her double barrels from my kisser."
Violet and a typical conversation with Harvey
Ann Charles
#6. I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.
Bessie Coleman
#7. I think I was probably an early teenager when I discovered Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and a bunch of people that are on a long list of artists. They were important to me, especially as an early adolescent.
Madeleine Peyroux
#8. Listen to my story and everything will come out true
Bessie Smith
#9. That's what the cat said to the canary when he swallowed him - 'You'll be all right.'
Alvah Bessie
#10. I ain't good-lookin', but I'm somebody's angel child.
Bessie Smith
#11. So, my sweetheart back home writes to me and wants to know what this gal in Bombay's got that she hasn't got. So I just write back to her and says, Nothin', honey. Only she's got it here.
Alvah Bessie
#12. It's a long road, but I know I'm gonna find the end.
Bessie Smith
#13. I need a little sugar in my bowl and a little hot dog in my roll.
Bessie Smith
#14. If I can create the minimum of my plans and desires, there shall be no regrets.
Bessie Coleman
#16. Do you know what the difference between a Hucow and a normal woman is?
A Hucow lactates great quantities of milk and is always very, very horny.
Bessie Hucow
#18. Bessie- A man picking out a wife is like asking a cow to pick out a farmer.
Margaret Brownley
#19. I think maybe miracles are something everybody has to find out about for themselves. Telling them about it doesn't make them believe. It just makes them think you're crazy as a bessie bug.
Jenny Wingfield
#20. Bessie?" I looked down at the bull serpent. "But ... he's too cute. He couldn't destroy the world."
-Percy Jackson
Rick Riordan
#21. Poverty has a home in Africalike a quiet second skin.It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with unconscious dignity.
Bessie Head
#22. The first big stars, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, you know, these were gigantic stars. I even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether the first glimmering of music is a mother soothing a baby.
Hugh Laurie
#23. Tell them that as soon as I can walk I'm going to fly!
Bessie Coleman
#25. The Greatest Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing.
Bessie Smith
#27. I write because I have authority from life to do so.
Bessie Head
#28. Bessie Braddock: "Winston, you're drunk. Churchill: "Bessie, you're ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober.
Winston Churchill
#29. It seemed to be a makeshift replacement for love, absenting oneself from stifling atmospheres, because love basically was a torrential storm of feeling; it thrived only in partnership with laughing generosity and truthfulness.
Bessie Head
#30. Come, Miss Jane, don't cry,' said Bessie, as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire, 'Don't burn!' but how could she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey?
Charlotte Bronte
#31. I wonder if you're fast as they say," Bessie Weasel chirruped, her hand slowly straying toward the belt.
"Wondering is free," Cinnabar said finally, his voice soft and low. "Certainty has its price".
Daniel Polansky
#32. No time to marry, no time to settle down; I'm a young woman, and I ain't done runnin' around.
Bessie Smith
#33. Maybe! Maybe! Maybe if your aunt had a beard, she'd be your uncle.
Alvah Bessie
#34. A discipline I have observed is an attitude of love and reverence to people.
Bessie Head
#35. When you're dealing with monkeys, you've got to expect some wrenches.
Alvah Bessie
#36. People with really weak characters cause an immense amount of suffering in the world. They destroy whole civilisations.
Bessie Head
#37. I thought I could change the world. It took me a hundred years to figure out I can't change the world. I can only change Bessie. And honey, that ain't easy either.
A. Elizabeth Delany
#39. When my bed is empty, Makes me feel awful mean and blue. My springs are getting rusty, Living single like I do.
Bessie Smith
#40. I might really have gone round the bend. I mean people who get visions and see a gigantic light descend on them from the sky can't be all there but if so I feel mighty happy. If one is happy and cracked it's much better than being unhappy and sane.
Bessie Head
#41. Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go." "Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be afraid of me. Don't start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it's so provoking.
Charlotte Bronte
#42. It's a long old road, but I know I'm gonna find the end.
Bessie Smith
#43. From now on, if I ever get to burn another newspaper, I'll remember what a few cents can buy.
Alvah C. Bessie
#45. [Advice to Bessie Smith:] Let your soul do the singin'.
Ma Rainey
#46. Bessie, the old gray mule, had two speeds: slow and stop. A stick of dynamite could not have put any more giddy-up in her pace ...
Carolyn Brown
#47. To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Bessie Anderson Stanley
#48. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight.
Charlotte Bronte
#50. Back Water Blues" by Bessie Smith. This is the one most closely associated with the 1927 flood,
Tom Franklin
#52. When people ask me how we've lived past one hundred, I say, 'Honey, we never married. We never had husbands to worry us to death!
A. Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany
Amy Hill Hearth
#53. Down Hearted Blues, by Bessie Smith. This is the song Ingersoll is singing to the baby
Tom Franklin
#54. Love is mutually feeding each other, not one living on another like a ghoul.
Bessie Head
#55. Bessie: 'Why don't you get married?'
Zooey: 'I like riding in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married.
J.D. Salinger
#56. I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.
Bessie Head
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