Madam Walker was a master marketer. But her brilliance was in taking it to another level by training women, by traveling, by making very motivational speeches and by providing independent income for women who otherwise would have to be maids and sharecroppers.
Through the years, Madam Walker has certainly become a staple of anything that has to do with black history, women's history and entrepreneurship.
Don't sit around and wait for the opportunities to come. You have to get up and make those opportunities come.
People collect boredom, they hoard it, they wallow in it, hoping that one day it'll be of interest and become an effete ennui. Let me tell you, it doesn't.
Every man imagines that he will turn his suit like a double agent, that it can be twisted to his will with irony or comedy, that the man can undermine its origins.
If you're bored, it's because someone else is fulfilling his dream. Become a bore. It's the most interesting thing you'll ever do.
I don't do dinner parties. I have people come to share the food I've cooked for the family.
When Americans come to London they usually say how much they love the history, the tradition, the splendid tumpty-tum of things whose very repetition has become their point.
You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain.
