Karen

“As we worked on From These Roots together, she struggled to voice her feelings about the passing of her siblings and grandmother. For long periods, she could do little more than wipe the tears from her eyes. I offered sympathy, and together we sat in silence. Finally came the day when she began to speak of the ordeals. In her mind, though, she had reversed the chronology; she had Big Mama dying after Cecil when, in fact, Rachel Franklin had died in late 1988, a year before her grandson. When I gently pointed this out, Aretha grew furious. She informed me that in the matter of the deaths of her loved ones, she hardly needed correction. I checked again with Erma and Earline, my original sources for the information. I also obtained the death certificate. The facts confirmed what I had told Aretha, yet Aretha remained adamant. In her published book, she has Cecil dying before her grandmother, mistakenly stating that Big Mama passed in 1990.”
― David Ritz, Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

“I don’t care what they say about Aretha,” said Billy Preston. “She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the shit out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best fuckin’ singer this fucked-up country has ever produced.”
― David Ritz, Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

“Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.”
― Oprah Winfrey

“You have to admire her for trying,” said Ruth Bowen. “She’s always trying. She’s always trying to get back on planes, always trying to lose weight, always trying to manage her money and figure out how to manage a relationship with a man. It’s good to try. But if you’re gonna succeed, you have to understand yourself. You have to look deep into yourself and figure out what makes you fail. Why do I have so many fears? Why am I a compulsive eater? Why do I wind up chasing off all these men? Aretha does not want to look at herself. She doesn’t want to critique herself. She doesn’t know how to do that. She can’t take criticism either from without or from within. The result is that nothing changes for her. The world keeps knocking on her door because the world wants to hear her sing. That will never change.”
― David Ritz, Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin