“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.”

I’m extremely blessed to have the extraordinary mother that I have, and I don’t mean Diana Ross, I mean the mother. My mom paved a road that didn’t exist, as did Oprah.

One of the things I’ve realized is how portable God is. No really, He’s everywhere!

We all, as women, need to continue to change our gaze from how we are seen to how we are seeing.

Nothing goes to windward like a 747.

The clothing, the makeup, the freedom of expression in [the models’] bodies. It was Linda and Christy and Naomi at the time. So I modeled before college.

My generation is one of the first generations of “choiceful” women – women who have actually had the choice of how they architect their lives – and I don’t think shame should have any place in that. But as that generation, you get cuts and bruises.

Sometime in my second year at Brown [University], I took an acting class. And the lightbulb went off for me. I fell in love with it. I realized that everything I was afraid of about myself, all my fears, could be used in that world.

My mom helped me. I was very shy growing up, but my shyness sort of manifested in a big personality.

This woman [Bow] was not simply a reflection of who her husband was. She was her own whole self. And even if we weren’t exploring life through her eyes, when we did see her it was clear that she had a full life.

Differences in experience, points of view and opinions aren’t what pulls us apart. It’s what pulls us together.

I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me.

There is a way to be a woman, ask for what we deserve and be able to negotiate.

Someone asked me recently, “Do you get sick of people asking you about your hair?” And the reason I don’t is because I actually feel like you could chronicle my journey of self-acceptance through my journey with my hair. It’s a badge of something bigger.

Sometimes I feel like art is supposed to mirror life, but strangely it’s as if art is trying to catch up to life, to a certain extent?

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.

Obviously given good health, and a continuing audience and a record company that allows me to do music.

The films an audience really enjoys are the ones that were enjoyable in the making.

A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate.

I prefer that for my own satisfaction over radio, there’s no audience. TV, there’s no audience. I need the response of the audience, even if it’s a silent response.

Every day is Thanksgiving for me, man. Yeah, I still have an audience, and they ask the local promoter, “When is Al coming back?”

It’s hard for a liberal to go on between Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, because it’s like doing country music after hip-hop. I mean, just, the audience doesn’t go from one to the other.

And when it’s sold to 50 countries or whatever, for me it’s a great deal. I make movies for an audience so if that audience grows, I feel really honoured and thankful for it.

I would love to work in international movies just because the talent all around the world is great.