“Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.”

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.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we’re complicated.

Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.

I want to span different genres. I want to be able to transform. I want to be able to be sexy, and funny, and quirky, and all the other things that I am. And I feel that the best way that I can achieve that is by producing.

That’s why there’s so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.

I am not a glam woman – this definitely is a mask I put on for the public.

Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one’s balance. I think that it’s very damaging.

Ordinary people who are just kind of just going about their lives are transformed into heroes because they have the courage to put their voices out there. And I think that’s a powerful message in this time of political strife.

[I listen to] “Uptown Funk”, Bruno Mars, sometimes even Nina Simone and Adele. Whatever comes up, whatever floats my boat, whatever makes me tap into something in me to just decompress – I listen to that.

Relationships change us and make us grow.

I think that you always want to gravitate towards people who absolutely are great at what they do and go for authenticity.

I love Wal-Mart. You can put that down. I love Wal-Mart. My husband and I hang out there.

Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.

Anything can be achieved with a good, healthy dose of courage.

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.

I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.

Is adult amusement killing our children, or is killing our children amusing adults?

Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it’s not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.

I firmly believe, however, that if your children have never hated you, you have failed as a parent.

I want to inspire kids.

That’s really what my work is all about – bringing kids together.

If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.

If men found out how to give birth to children they’ll never propose again.

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.