Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What excites me is just taking some time to breathe in life. The mundane is very exciting.
I really wanted to show [in "fences"] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.
Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one's balance. I think that it's very damaging.
Turning 50 is making me reflect on my life in a way that's more compassionate and forgiving.
Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.
We all have different narratives; all of our narratives are at different stages of development.
I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, "Do you know how fabulous you are?"
Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.
That's why there's so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.
Acting came from growing up in dysfunction. I mean, a lot of great times, but a lot of dysfunction.
Even when I get the fried-chicken special of the day, I have to dig into it like it's filet mignon.
I started a production company out of necessity, the need for great narratives for actors of color.
I don't think most people understand acting, even the people who call themselves savvy, even actors.
That's always the biggest surprise when people meet me: how buoyant I am and how fun and light I am.
I would love to do really great work and for women who are marginalised to see me as an inspiration.
It feels really good to embrace exactly who I am and be my sexy, to be my sexualized, to be my woman.
And "classically not beautiful" is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you.
What do you want? What do you want your life to be? What do you want your testimony to be? Go for it!
I would love to star in a remake of Thelma and Louise. Yep, that's the one I'd be interested in redoing.
The predator wants your silence. It feeds their power, entitlement, and they want it to feed your shame.
I would love to be remembered as a person who used her life to inspire others in any way, shape or form.
Acting is not rocket science, but it is an art form. What you are doing is illuminating humanity. Or not.
I haven't seen most of what I've done. I can't even list them. Most television jobs. I haven't seen a lot.
You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.
I've had to sink my teeth into a role that was probably a fried-chicken dinner and make it into a filet mignon.
I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.
And this is what was fascinating to me about 'The Help'; they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
Your ability to adapt to failure, and navigate your way out of it, absolutely 100 percent makes you who you are.
I've done a really bad job with teaching daughter to put on makeup, but I have taught her how to put on lipstick.
Sometimes there is no sugar-coating it. Sometimes you have to challenge people's belief systems in a progressive way.
There's no prerequisites to worthiness. You're born worthy, and I think that's a message a lot of women need to hear.
When people come into the theater, whether it's the screen or the stage, they've gotta be transported and transformed.
Just because I was 30 doesn't mean I was grown. God, I was such an idiot. I was an absolute idiot at 30. And I grew up.
It's always hard to be private in public, which is what acting is because you have to do thing really emotionally naked.
All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.
I think that you always want to gravitate towards people who absolutely are great at what they do and go for authenticity.
We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.
Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.
They say the two most important days in a person's life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.
To me, it's always a luxury to be able to work with the best of the best because they make it easier for you to do what you do.
Egos are an occupational hazard in acting, but I don't have much of one, and my husband doesn't have much of one, so it's good.
My grandmom worked as a maid for most of her life, and she worked in the tobacco and the cotton fields, whatever she could get.
When a character has so many secrets and so much inner life, it's a joy to play those characters because you can use your craft.
I think that what happens so often on screen is high-stake moments tends to look too pretty. And I just don't think it's honest.
I still feel like when I walk on the set, I'm starting from scratch, until I realize, 'OK, I do know what I'm doing. I'm human.'
There's got to be a voice deep within you that is untouched by definitions. And it is there that you become divinely who you are.
I did want to mark the fact that it was the first African-American to win the Lead Actress category.I thought it was so progressive.
When you're poor, you are invisible. Every poor person will tell you nobody sees you. So being famous was me just wanting to be seen.
I didn't aspire to be just a celebrity; I aspired to be an actress... I always wanted to be respected as someone who knew their craft.
August Wilson is the one writer that writes about men like my father, who had a fifth grade education, who was a janitor at McDonald's.