“The dark of my eyes, the fullness of my lips, and coal in my complexion.”

The show [Shots Fired] is an autopsy of our criminal justice system.

Understanding that what it is that you’re doing isn’t limited to the roles and the rejection, it’s bigger than that, it’s about your purpose in life.

I became an instant fan of the show [Underground] seconds into the opening frames of the pilot.

Study and know that we are always a student of the craft well after we’ve completed any course of study… and approach the work as a servant, not a star.

Learning about all these elements and aspects of her was mind-blowing and educational for me as a woman because I have to sometimes remind people that have known me for years.

But truthfully, we have so many stories, lives and subjects to explore that I’d love to keep pushing towards new knowledge.

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

Rosa Parks was primed, she had the Civil Rights Movement behind her, she didn’t just decide to sit on the bus, it was strategic.

I felt validated and valued , and here was this woman [Whoopi Goldberg ] inside my television screen who gave me a voice.

When that drone shot carried us through the main house with Rosalie, played so unflinchingly-brilliantly by Jurnee Smollett Bell, I signed on for the ride.

I had praying grandmothers who bathed me in “The Word” and filled the atmosphere with worship.

I walked away from the craft because I wanted to know that this is what I was supposed to do with my life.

That is a huge part of my excitement, the fact that this generation will get such a beautifully-detailed introduction to a hero and icon that has largely lived in a few pages of our history books and in one-dimensional photographs.

You know, to be completely disgusted with injustice to the point that you will have to take some huge leaps of faith. And it may take one person leading many.

Harriet Tubman is the perpetuation of a “Super Soul Sunday” every day.

Harriet Tubman didn’t have strategy meetings or a movement behind her, she was the movement.

Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person’s mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

I see them in my audience all the time, with the fur coat, a woman whose hand is always out front, or the two fingers are on the cheek to show her diamond. I don’t have anything against that.

Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”

At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like.

When a guy takes off his coat, he’s not going to fight. When a guy takes off his wristwatch, watch out!

We even used to rake the hippies over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it.

In winter, some voices are like coats.