“Relationships change us and make us grow.”

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.

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.

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.

Basketball is just a platform for me to inspire people.

First off, I’d like to thank God for changing my life. It let me really realize what life is all about. Basketball is just a platform for me to inspire people, and I realize that.

If travel were so inspiring and informing a business … then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.

There are looks that I see on other people that I think would look horrible on me, but I think if somebody has the courage to be really daring and try something outlandish, then more power to them. That’s just encouraging and inspiring.

From Calcutta has gone forth a living stream of knowledge in many branches of study. It is inspiring to think of the long succession of scholars, both Indian and European, who have lived in this city, made it their own, and given it of their best.

It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit.

An affection which is not inspired by the Lord will soon be transformed into lust.

Teachers are always trying to inspire people to do better, to learn, to grow. That’s what we do, and we’re proud of the success we’ve had here doing that, and it’s something we’ll certainly continue to do.