“You can’t be hesitant about who you are.”

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.

I wasn’t mean; I wasn’t evil. I was nice. And let me tell you, a hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy.

The uplift of a fearless heart will help us over barriers. No one ever overcomes difficulties by going at them in a hesitant, doubtful way.