Mahershala Ali Quotes

The people that I admire have a wonderful balance of self-belief and humility.

To really be conscious of how long the journey is, be patient, push yourself, persevere and always be working on your craft while waiting for your break.

Hold tight to the mentality of being a student, meaning hold on to curiosity and approach life as a student.

I always hope to be a better person tomorrow than today.

I'm not much of cook, but I cook a mean bowl of oatmeal.

I think what I've learned from working on "Moonlight" is we see what happens when you persecute people. They fold into themselves.

At the end of the day we're all spirits having a physical experience. That really comes from my relationship with Islam because it just makes me really conscious of my action.

At the end of the day we're all spirits having a physical experience.

I think my mom gave me the borders, the - gave me a very clear understanding of what the perimeter was. And I had to find my fun within those boundaries.

It felt like it disrupted my rhythm in growing up. But I will say that I'm really grateful for [my mother's] own personal transition.

I grew up in church. My mom's a minister, and my grandmother was an ordained minister. I was always very mindful of the presence of a greater being I call God.

I do think that there are people who are able to connect with and empathize with anyone who is going through something difficult, just naturally. I don't think it's a world of effort for everyone.

This is 2003, 2004. And then I started - after the Patriot Act, I would always get my financial packages in the mail and they would just be opened. And it was like, what is going on here?

I had read some books on the Baha'i Faith. I had read - I was looking into Buddhism and trying to understand sort of the agnostic approach, so there was just a bunch of stuff I was just looking at.

In my time at St. Mary's College, drifting out of sports because it was something that began to feel really finite. And I could see that I didn't have the passion to sustain a career in sports.

I've personally been on the outside sometimes. But I was - I personally was never persecuted especially in the way in which sharing my own experiences.

How do I transform and be believable as Krogstad in "A Doll's House" or Sir Peter Teazle in "A School for Scandal".

It was really a focus on how to in some ways keep moving in this direction towards something that allowed me to express myself in a way that sports didn't.

I played all four years [at St. Mary's College] with - at a certain point, basketball became the thing I was doing most, but it was really in my periphery.

I didn't have the passion for athletics in that way, that there were other parts of me that felt under-served and that needed to be nurtured and needed my energy.

Getting to St. Mary's College was a big deal for me because that essentially led to me getting to go to NYU.

Between the two [parents], it was a really unique upbringing, I think, especially for where I was from.

The freedom that I wanted as a kid would - probably would not have been good for me and not in the way in which I wanted it.

Again, having - fortunately having never been in trouble. And eventually I found out that I was on a watch list.

I was a sports kid.

My parents were in high school when I was born. My mom was 16, my dad was 17. They were kids, at the very beginning of coming into their own and finding themselves.

At graduate school in 1999, I finally had the chance to examine why I believe what I believe. I realised that I'd had no period in my life where I'd consciously tried to develop my own theology.

Social media has colonized what was once a sacred space occupied by emptiness: the space reserved for thought and creativity.