“Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.”

As an artist, you’ve got to see the mess. That’s what we do. We get a human being, and it’s like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

That is a huge need for a lot of women, even in 2016. You can have the most ambitious career woman, and at the end of the day, she’s like, ‘I just want to be a mom.

Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.

Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person’s capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else.

That’s how I digest it, ’cause I can press the fast-forward button and I know that I’m gonna have to continue to be an actor, continue to make choices, continue to perform in a show every week.

Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes – that’s what it is, as an actor.

Knowing the only way out is education, even if you don’t have parents that are extraordinarily wealthy. I understand that I have to be an active participant in [my daughter’s] education in order for her to thrive in the world.

I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that’s changed my entire perspective.

We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers.

I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.

The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.

We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

When your passion and drive are bigger than your fears, you just dive.

Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you’re not worthy.

Tyler Perry’s ‘Madea Goes to Jail!’ Which, I have to tell you, of everything that I’ve ever done in my career, that’s the only thing that’s perked up the ears of my nieces and nephews. That is it, that’s done it for them. That made me a bona fide star in their eyes!

I’ve been in this business 25 years. I’ve been eking out a living doing Broadway, off-Broadway… I’ve seen the unemployment line a lot.

If an appointed daughter by accident dies without, leaving a son, the husband of the appointed daughter may, without hesitation, take that estate.

When the purpose of the appointment to ,cohabit with the widow bas been attained in accordance with the law, those two shall behave towards each other like a father and a daughter in law.

Outside your door, the world is waiting. Inside your heart, a voice is calling. The four corners of the world are watching. So travel, daughter, travel. Go get it, girl.

I believe it from the bottom of my heart, and your sons and daughters, too, can have the American dream come true.

My daughter is not an object to flash around or a prized item to put on display.

Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.

I believe strongly in the rights of women… my mother is a woman, my sister is a woman, my daughter is a woman, my wife is a woman.

No one expected the preacher’s daughter to sin, but they sure would love to catch me at it.