Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think there is this narrative that if you are a black woman, and you are strong, and you are educated, it's like, 'Good luck getting a black man.'
I took organic chemistry, and I got my first-ever F. I ended up going to summer school, and the whole time, I'm thinking, 'I am not good at sciences.'
My actual desire is to be able to comfortably walk out of my house without any makeup on and feel as beautiful as I do when my makeup artist beats my face.
Over the years, my relationship with God has changed my life for the better - it's grown me up, given me a sense of purpose, and grounded me in my identity.
New York is a walking city, so you'll be dressed to the nines, and you'll go out, and you feel more special and more pretty because more people acknowledge you.
I had my masters in public health, and the goal was to be a doctor, and organic chemistry let me know that that was not going to happen, as did my fear of blood.
As strong as we are, we have our moments. My mama is an African woman who had four kids and was a nurse for 25 years, and she had her moments. I've seen her cry.
A lot of people hustle differently, and I was like, 'You know what, let me hustle and create, and let me have something to show,' cuz my hustle led to opportunity.
I went to an all-girls boarding school in Maryland. I used to laugh at the girls in the theater program - I was pre-med, National Honors Society; I was on that track.
It's great for people to give out of the kindness of their hearts, but because we're in a consumerist society, it's also great to have the opportunity to give and get.
I grew up in a place called Port Harcourt, Nigeria, the youngest of four. What I remember most about Nigeria was the ease. I would play by the pool, have fun with friends.
I used to work in public health, and the issues were sustainability, how the funds were being delineated, and if the funds were actually helping the people we think they're helping.
There's a lot of negative speak about what it means to be an immigrant. I'm like, 'OK, I don't know where that came from.' We do the dirty jobs. We do the good jobs. We get the job done.
I'll probably always opt for makeup because I just like the way it feels. You can play with it and create different looks, and I think that's fun. But I also want the option to not need it.
I have immigrant, African parents. They would say, in their Nigerian accents, 'So you want to be a jester?' And I was like, 'I don't want to be a court jester, Ma. I want to be a comedian.'
Everyone has met or seen or interacted with a Nigerian in America because we leave Nigeria for here. We're your doctors. We're your lawyers. We're your child's best friend. All of the above.
It's only in acting where I've heard in auditions, 'Can you black it up a little bit? Can you make her a little bit more urban?' And it's just like, 'What?' I don't even know the word for that.
When it comes to black female comedians, it's like, if you're not overweight, are you funny? There's rules, like, you can't be skinny and pretty and funny. I'm all three, sorry to break it to you.
Wanda Sykes and I have had similar career trajectories. We're both from the D.C. area. She spent five years working as a contracting specialist for the NSA, and I got my master's in public health.
I was looking around this room, this sea of industry folk. If I had have worn black and white, somebody would have asked me to get them a cocktail; the only other people of colour there were servers.
My mom would always say, 'Hair is a woman's beauty.' I cut my hair all off. I was completely bald, and that was, like, 'What in the world?' My mom was like, 'What happened?' She had so many questions.
I don't look at God as some boring dude in the sky that tells me what to do all day. I legitimately be like, 'Yo, you know what, G, that's crazy how that happened. That's dope. You know, you the real MVP.'
I knew I didn't want to be a doctor but didn't know what I wanted to do. I prayed, and all I heard back was: 'Do comedy.' It was something I had never done before, but I gave in, tried comedy, and the rest is history.
I've been fortunate that the men I surround myself with in the comedy world are really decent people: men who are very aware, who are very respectful, and understand their place and maybe even some of their privilege.
I believe in the equal and opposite: If I exist, there is an equal and opposite version of me, and so however long I have to wait, and wherever he happens to be, we'll find it. Sometimes it's like, 'Jesus, where he at?'
There's this idea if you are a woman of colour, that you must never let them see you break down. That we've got to show ourselves in the best light, always, as the 'Strong Black Women' and bring that 'black girl magic' all the time.
You can't say you're an actor if you've never acted, and you can't act if no one gives you an opportunity, but they won't give you an opportunity because you've never acted. You're like, 'What in the world? Someone give me a chance!'
On 'Insecure,' Molly works at a law firm, and there's scenes where her boss doesn't value her voice and doesn't value her efforts. And we had a lot of women tweeting 'Me too' in that situation. We're saying, 'Hey, no more. Not on our watch.'
I can only see what's in front of me, but God can see what's behind, what's ahead of me, what's beside me, and it just makes it so much easier to release control, cuz at the end of the day, if He brought me to it, He's gonna have to bring me through it.
Sometimes you are the only living, walking, breathing version of the Bible that people will ever see. What long-lasting taste are you going to leave in their mouths? A lot of people have left a bad taste. And it's so unfortunate, because God is the best!
I remember talking to old-school African American grandpops, and they're just like, 'When I saw my wife, I looked up from across the street, and I said, 'That girl gon' be my wife someday.' And we've been married 45 years.' Like, what? That's all it took?
'First Gen' is kind of the ode to my parents and to really all immigrant children who come here with kind of a preemptive expectation placed on them, and then they get there, and they realize the American dream is bigger than, sometimes, what our parents dreamt.
I worked for a company called Population Services International, a social marketing company advocating healthy behaviors. We had a big branding campaign with celebrities to help educate about the proper use of mosquito nets, for example, to help prevent malaria.
For me, staying ready has always been, like, the preparations: do the behind-the-scenes or do what you think that's not sexy that nobody will see, but when they do see it, it's like, 'Oh, snap... what she's doing on her own, we'll add to that, and it'll blow up.'
I'm just gonna talk about being Nigerian-American. I'm gonna talk about being single. I'm gonna talk about what happened to me on the train today. I'm gonna talk about so many other things that, as a comic, you're able to talk about because you see the world in sarcasm.