For me, that was a hard scene [in "Fences"] to do twenty-something times, which (laughing), I counted. That was difficult, but once I did it, I felt like I could do anything.

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.

They say the two most important days in a person's life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.

Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

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

When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself.

You can't be hesitant about who you are.

Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.

I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me.

I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

If you remembered somebody was as real as yourself, how could you kill anybody?

Without passion everything lame in this life.

It's true what they say, then-history is written by the victors.

In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy.

I always want to give more than I gave yesterday.

I always believed a singer should be able to sing any kind of song. If I wanted to sing a Cole Porter song, I should be able to do that. Or Sherry, I should be able to do that. Or a Dylan song.

My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.

Trust takes one second to lose and a lifetime to rebuild.

Compassion in evangelical churches is out of balance. When I talk about it, I get a lot of glazed expressions.

Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.