Lupita Nyong'o Quotes

No matter where you're from, your dreams are valid.

What I've learned from myself is that I don't have to be anybody else. Myself is good enough.

You can't eat beauty, it doesn't sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty inflamed the heart and merchants the soul.

You fail, and then what? Life goes on. It's only when you risk failure that you discover things.

I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be.

What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion: for yourself and for those around you.

There is no shame in black beauty.

You have to allow for the impossible to be possible.

To be human is to seek perfection, and find joy in never attaining it.

I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.

Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It keeps us honest.

I've worked hard to feel beautiful in my natural skin. Personally, I don't ever want to depend on makeup to feel beautiful.

Every time I overcome an obstacle, it feels like success. Sometimes the biggest ones are in our head - the saboteurs that tell us we can't.

We don't get to pick the genes we want. There's room in this world for beauty to be diverse.

That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.

To this day, I love eating steak tacos before going to the red carpets.

I feel privileged that people are looking up to me and perhaps a dream will be born because of my presence.

And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned.

As actors, you become an expert at starting over.

You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you.

I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya, so it's hustle and bustle, and there's always something going on.

It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's.

European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world - the idea that darker skin is not beautiful, that light skin is the key to success and love. Africa is no exception.

It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.

I have a very ostrich mentality. I feel like I have my head in the sand so no one can see me.

Human beings have an instinct for freedom.

Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV.

Being called gorgeous is not a bad thing! But at the same time, I don’t want to thrive on people’s opinions of me.

[My mother] always said I was beautiful and I finally believed her at some point.

It's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.

Beautiful people have many advantages, but so do friendly people.

There's always a sense of newness with acting, because every role, you come to every role fresh.

With success comes more responsibility, a larger size of existence, which is uncomfortable.

I had this vivid image of myself at the age of 60 looking back on my life and truly regretting the fact that I hadn't tried to be an actor

As human beings, what makes us able to empathize with people is a connection that is not necessarily understood mentally.

I love color. I'm enjoying trying all different shades. Makeup isn't something I've worn a lot of in my life.

Happiness is the most important thing.

In the madness, you have to find calm.

Even in my dreams of being an actor, my dream was not in the celebrity. My dream was in the work that I wanted to do.

I do my best work when I feel conviction to say something through the character I play. Always I want to have integrity and not compromise that.

I like to wear things, I don't like things to wear me.

Your value is in yourself; the other stuff will come and go.

I never, in my wildest dreams, could I have thought that the first role I get out of school would lead to an Oscar nomination.

I'm pretty awesome at making salad dressings.

The first time I cut all my hair off was when I was 19. I just got fed up going to the salon every week. I'd had enough! On a whim, it was off. It's low-maintenance.

I would love to have a career that's governed by the material; I always want to be part of stories that I feel are worthwhile.

I went to the Independent Spirit Awards and won.

My immediate family was always very supportive. It was my own fear of the rest of the world not accepting me, the rest of our society not accepting my wish to be an actor.

I'm interested in generating work for myself. I have trouble with this waiting-for-the-phone-to-ring lifestyle, especially after drama school, which was so creatively fulfilling.

Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.