Children should have a balanced start in life: a mother and a father. I think that's the only reason to get married.

The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat.

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch - what make you go beyond the norm.

I am not a quitter. I will fight until I drop. It is just a matter of having some faith in the fact that as long as you are able to draw breath in the universe, you have a chance.

If each person in this world will simply take a small piece of this huge thing, this amazing quilt, and work it regardless of the color of the yarn, we will have harmony on this planet.

I saw that I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. So I made a choice to use my career as a platform to address the issues of the race I was born into.

Whatever good I have accomplished as an actress I believe came in direct proportion to my efforts to portray black women who have made positive contributions to my heritage.

You never know what motivates you.

All I have to do is find someone who has something to say that will enrich my life and they can't get rid of me.

We have to support our own films. If we don't, how can we expect others to support them?

I will lead my people out of bondage, Lord.

My 'Sam Gamgee' is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.

There's nothing better than being in an asylum, if you're going to have a bunch of crazy people in an asylum, and they're all beautiful Hollywood actresses.

Sometimes being human sucks.

Did you have an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky?

The poor tell us who we are, the prophets tell us who we could be, so we hide the poor, and kill the prophets.

Forgiveness is better than revenge.

I was quite thin, and I didn't have to worry until I had my appendix out and a mysterious metabolic change occurred.

I'm not a fan of the facts. Facts change; my opinion never does.

For it is the grace of Christ, and not our own virtue, that gives us the power to overcome the flesh and the world.

And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can't go.