“One or the other she was going to have by any means necessary.”

[Harriet Tubman] lived such a full, complex, and irrefutably-dynamic life that all the craft in the world would be insufficient in honoring her legacy.

The real truth is that [Harriet Tubman ] spirit is so powerful that it consumes you.

She was inspired by being sick and tired of the injustice she was experiencing and she knew she had a right to liberty or death.

We’re living in a time where we all got to stay woke !

Very early on in this process though I studied acting in high school and college, soon after graduation,

As well as the one of the baddest women to literally ever walk the land. I surrendered to her spirit.

It was also incredibly serendipitous that I would later learn I shared a birthday with Whoop [Goldberg ].

An opportunity to honor the legacy of the lives drawn into the lines in my face, the broad of my nose.

Though I developed my own personal spiritual relationship later in life, the foundation they laid is what my faith was built upon.

When you understand the purpose [of life], then you can deal and journey through the obstacles, the rejections, the stops and starts, highs-and-lows with a different lens because you know that you’re moving in what you’re supposed to do.

Thank God for Canada! In the context of this narrative [in Underground] and beyond.

One of the first memories I have was watching Whoopi Goldberg perform her one-woman show on Broadway on HBO.

Canada was certainly an additional option for the many traveling the treacherous terrain of the Underground Railroad in pursuit of what was perceived as “freedom.”

The masterful work of the DP [Director of Photography] Kevin McKnight and his crew, and the layers and depths each actor goes to to ensure we the audience feel a human connection to these characters led me to sign my name on the dotted line.

Her spirit is one that we absolutely need today, as we face odds that are akin to the divisive and systemic oppression that we read about in our history books, but it’s taken on a modern-day articulation of itself.

I am indebted to [my grandmothers] always for cradling me in the heart of Christ and encouraging my passion to press towards the mark of the high calling on my life, wherever that takes me.

I mean, yeah, I want to lose some weight! I’m doing the best I can.

But, Christ, there’s a difference between exotic and foreign, isn’t there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.

Just to see what a pink dress can mean to a woman, any woman, but a disabled woman, that’s extra special and thrilling because they shouldn’t be separated and their disabilities don’t have to separate them in anyway.

People are watching TV, they’re watching some clips on their iPhone. I mean, some folks are sitting there on the iPhone, watching the Colbert Report, and meanwhile there’s a huge plasma TV right in front of them that they could be watching it on.

I mean, I think everybody realizes that calling people racist is a waste of time, nobody buys it anymore.

If you have one gay experience, does that mean you’re gay? If you have one heterosexual experience, does that mean you’re straight? Life doesn’t work quite so cut and dried.

I believe that Judy Garland’s artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: ‘oh, she brought so much of her life to her music’, I don’t really believe that. I believe that she didn’t have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

A good person can make another person good; it means that goodness will elicit goodness in the society; other persons will also be good.