I think even when I was little there was signs that I was an artist. I've always been an artist.

The reason why I like theater is because it's a long journey, and no matter what role you play, we are all in it together.

My first exploration through art was really through music - I've trained classically with piano for about ten years.

My mom was really busy when I was growing up, but she did a really good job in terms of balancing her home life with her professional life. She basically took me everywhere.

I grew up in the theater with my mom and that's how I knew I wanted to be an actor in the first place.

The way I work emotionally is: I don't ever try to cry. I try not to, which is what for me produces organic emotion.

I wasn't even a theater kid in high school. I studied classical piano, and I ran track.

I started playing piano when I was around four; thats my first passion.

When I'm in Los Angeles, sometimes I hesitate saying that I'm an actor because people are like, "Of course you are." And I'm like "No, not, 'Of course I am.'"

My thing is that if you don't really connect to something or see that it's going to be something you're going to be proud of, I wouldn't do it.

Personally, especially as a young black woman, I didn't think that Los Angeles was a place for me to start. There's a certain type that they go for or don't.

When you are in love, you are in an aura of aplomb in the midst of adversity.

Don't just discover . . . Encounter!

Yet I've discovered that how I look is not a function of anything as ephemeral as my hair

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.

I don't think that people in America are really given enough information about the Third World.

An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.

People will tell you anything but what they do is always the truth.

Everything is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour if seen as experience.

Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.