“I would love to star in a remake of Thelma and Louise. Yep, that’s the one I’d be interested in redoing.”

That is a huge need for a lot of women, even in 2016. You can have the most ambitious career woman, and at the end of the day, she’s like, ‘I just want to be a mom.

Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.

Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person’s capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else.

That’s how I digest it, ’cause I can press the fast-forward button and I know that I’m gonna have to continue to be an actor, continue to make choices, continue to perform in a show every week.

Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes – that’s what it is, as an actor.

Knowing the only way out is education, even if you don’t have parents that are extraordinarily wealthy. I understand that I have to be an active participant in [my daughter’s] education in order for her to thrive in the world.

I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that’s changed my entire perspective.

We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers.

I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.

The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.

We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

When your passion and drive are bigger than your fears, you just dive.

Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you’re not worthy.

Tyler Perry’s ‘Madea Goes to Jail!’ Which, I have to tell you, of everything that I’ve ever done in my career, that’s the only thing that’s perked up the ears of my nieces and nephews. That is it, that’s done it for them. That made me a bona fide star in their eyes!

I’ve been in this business 25 years. I’ve been eking out a living doing Broadway, off-Broadway… I’ve seen the unemployment line a lot.

Ultimately, it’s not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people’s expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

Almost every Monday I have a charity thing. I like that. I do.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time – give it, give it all, give it now.

I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn.

Horror gives place to wonder at your true account; The rest outstrips our comprehension; we give up.

Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.

It is when we ask for love less and begin giving it more that the basis of human love is revealed to us.

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.