I want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent

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.

Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.

Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways.

Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher will not indicate a favoring wind, or avert the thunderbolt.

One source of the sublime is infinity.

I don't even want to discuss Flashdance. I'm no critic, but that's an interesting phenomenon, that picture.

Men are just as vain as women, and sometimes even more so.

Anything less than extraordinary is a waste of my time.

I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.

Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures.

To me, bitterness is the under-arm odor of wishful weakness. It is the graceless acknowledgment of defeat.