In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful, white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can’t seem to get there now. I can’t seem to get over that line.
VIOLA DAVISI think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we’re complicated.
More Viola Davis Quotes
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Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.
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And that’s what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves – parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it’s pretty spectacular.
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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.
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I really wanted to show [in fences] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.
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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.
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Ultimately, it’s not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people’s expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.
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They say, ‘To serve is to love,’ and I think to serve is to heal, too.
VIOLA DAVIS -
[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.
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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.
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The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.
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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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Acting, it’s the disappearance of self, disappearance of your own needs and your own wants and the kind of embracing of the character that makes it work.
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I guess they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention” because you have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it.
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I’ve always just simply seen myself as an actor. And I believe that it serves me well to just think in terms of my craft. If hypothetically, I saw myself only as a sex symbol, or as some other limited stereotype, I think I would feel like a complete failure.
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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.
VIOLA DAVIS






