"I found my father's Super8mm film camera when I was around eight years old and started shooting with it. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but that's really where my filmmaking began."

“My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colorful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.”

“Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our children's lifetime. The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land.”

“He that alone would wise and mighty be,Commands that others love as well as he.Love as he lov'd! - How can we soar so high?-He can add wings when he commands to fly.Nor should we be with this command dismay'd;He that examples gives will give his aid:For he took flesh, that where his precepts fall,His practice, as a pattern, may prevail.”

“Every good story needs a complication. We learn this fiction-writing fundamental in courses and workshops, by reading a lot or, most painfully, through our own abandoned story drafts. After writing twenty pages about a harmonious family picnic, say, or a well-received rock concert, we discover that a story without a complication flounders, no matter how lovely the prose. A story needs a point of departure, a place from which the character can discover something, transform himself, realize a truth, reject a truth, right a wrong, make a mistake, come to terms.”

“I had been in a film, playing a young British aristocrat. My wife told me that she was invited to a dinner and she invited me to dinner and the hostess had seen me and said, 'You cannot bring him.' but I think that I've done enough to shatter the image”

“I'm not a real social person - I'm shy - and a lot of the business is just social”

“My voice is my gift. And Pops had me using it in the right way. I had many offers to sing pop, to sing rhythm and blues. Pops said "Mavis, this record company want to give you a million dollars." I said, "No daddy, I want to sing with the family." And I did. I never wanted to branch out by myself. But I've had to now. It's my mission. I've been left here to do it. And I'm grateful.”

Source : "Mavis Staples Interview: Staple Singers, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King, Jr., and that one time in Memphis". Interview with Ed Masley, www.azcentral.com. March 1, 2017.

“Oh that thou hadst like others been all words, And no performance.”