“I’m trying to find my own version of what makes me feel beautiful.”

My bathroom is filled with hair and makeup stuff and I play with it all the time. What the real lesson is, is that you can own your own sense of beauty. It doesn’t have to be something you get from somewhere else.

[Black-ish creator] Kenya Bariss wrote on Girlfriends. We’ve been friendly since then. He sent me [the pilot] and said, “I wrote it for you.” But I know what that means in this industry.

I have to take some time to dream some new dreams. I feel like there’s a treasure hunt in front of me. A treasure hunt that is speckled with and seeded by a deep-rooted wild freedom.

Why am I beating my hair up? Because I want it to look like something that it isn’t? These are questions that I’ve been pondering my whole life.

Wisdom means to choose now what will make sense later.

I want to be awake. I want to choose kindness, live & let live. I want joy, gratitude, and peace today.

I think television is doing a better job than films in terms of representing people, but television is still not diverse.

My mom didn’t adhere to any of those typical rules. She woke us up for school every morning, and was there at dinner or would call at bedtime. She never left for longer than a week. She recorded while we were sleeping.

If I’m going to show cleavage or chest then I don’t show leg. I show one thing. If I show leg then everything else is covered up.

In some of the darkest and hardest moments, there is always a part of me that is okay. And I can always access that part of me.

It would drive the photographers crazy because I would giggle and tell jokes. I was gregarious, and looking back, I realize I had a captive audience.

Somehow [Kenya Bariss] has figured out how to explore these very weighty, sticky, sharp topics, and still be funny and not make fun of the topic.

I’m a really big believer in self care. One of the ways I nourish my soul is I eat the way I live my life – joyfully.

Black-ish is really a show about an American family and these are some of the topics that come up – for all of us, in different ways – and we get to see how this family is walking through it.

I was shy, but it came out in a big personality. My turning point was when I let my hair go naturally and I got contact lenses. I am really blind, by the way. I have these big eyes that don’t work!

There are a ton of foods that are great for you, that’s like an indulgence.

The Spirit tells me – Fidel Castro will die – in the 90s. Oooh my! Some will try to kill him and they will not succeed. But there will come a change in his physical health, and he will not stay in power, and Cuba will be visited of God.

We’ll attack anyone who tries to harm our citizens.

I built a career on my archetype, and I’m grateful, but I’m trying to stretch.

I tend to have a cup of tea, try to stop worrying about what I did wrong, cool down and will the audience back in as soon as possible.

I have a friend who says the best boyfriends are ones with intimidating, good-looking older brothers. The boyfriends try harder because they’re so insecure. Maybe I’m the female equivalent.

Don’t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can’t be done except by liars.

For once you must try not to shirk the facts: mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.

Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You’re scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.