“It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?”

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who thinks differently.

Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.

Am I good enough? Yes, I am.

Even white people were recognizing him now.

I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel.

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts, good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this, I’d never forgive him.

Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

Look how I’m managing, I wanted to say in those moments, to my audience of no one. Does everyone see that I’m pulling this off?

In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.

The more popular you became, the more haters you acquired.

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?

Marriage, he told me early on, struck him as an unnecessary and overhyped convention.

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

The more visible signs of protest are gone, but I think there is a realization that the tactics of the late sixties are not sufficient to meet the challenges of the seventies.

My only two constants are to challenge myself and to try not to repeat myself.

I play in New York, man. Criticism is part of the game. You take criticism as a challenge.

The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.

All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.

I really enjoy playing a challenging role.

The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present.