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I want to sing like Aretha Franklin. Before her I wanted the technical ability of Ella Fitzgerald.

Lena Horne

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Lena Horne
Age: 92 †
Born: 1917
Born: June 30
Died: 2010
Died: May 9
Actor
Dancer
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Musician
Pin-Up Girl
Recording Artist
Singer
Stage Actor
Television Actor
New York City
New York
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne
Ability
Wanted
Like
Ella
Fitzgerald
Franklin
Technical
Sing

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I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else.
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In my early days I was a sepia Hedy Lamarr. Now I'm black and a woman, singing my own way.
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I'm me, and I'm like nobody else.
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Malcolm X raised my consciousness about myself and my people and other people more than any person I know. I knew him before he became Malcolm X.
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I thought of singing and acting as a living-making. I was able to take care of myself and a few of my friends.
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I'm still learning, you know. At 80, I feel there is a lot I don't know.
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My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.
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You wouldn't be allowed to get on a particular bus, but you'd be asked to sign your autograph.
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The naked female body is treated so weirdly in society. It's like people are constantly begging to see it, but once they do, someone's a hoe.
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A little nepotism never hurt nobody, honey. If you got it, use it. Press on with it. Remind them of it.
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music became my refuge and then my salvation.
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I had my schooling right there in the Cotton Club.
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Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
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You have to be taught to be second class you're not born that way. But the slanting process is so subtle that you frequently don't realize how you're being slanted until very late in the game.
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I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
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It's ill-becoming for an old broad to sing about how bad she wants it. But occasionally we do.
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50 years old is like springtime to me.
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It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. Carry it by the comfortable handles of gratitude for what's positive and that it is not worse, rather than the uncomfortable edges of bitterness for the negatives and that it is not better.
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Nobody black or white who really believes in democracy can stand aside now everybody's got to stand up and be counted.
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I remember the day tDr. King died. I wasn't angry at the beginning. It was like something very personal in my life had been touched and finished.
Lena Horne