Quotables 9 May 2024: The matchless Lena Horne ponders whether 'second class' status be innate, delving into why women can never seem to triumph in a society that demands both sensuality and prudence from them; and extolls the greatness of Count Basie

Lena Horne. Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

‘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’.

‘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’.

'I'm not alone, I'm free. I no longer have to be a credit, I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody’.

‘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’.

‘Count Basie isn't just a man, or even just a band. He's a way of life’.

Quotes via https://www.azquotes.com/author/6910-Lena_Horne

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