If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don't see it.

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.

To have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals.

The only thing I really, really want is for the U.S. to win again. Just to win another team gold. And, of course I would really want to win an all-around gold.

The foreign-language Oscar is something that doesn't go to the producer or the director; it goes to the country.

I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it.

Percy climbed the first step, then the next, remembering the thousands of times she'd run through the door, in a hurry to get to the future, to whatever was coming next, to this moment.

A good manager is best when people barely know that he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him.

A lot of people call me the architect of rock & roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true.

In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer, but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.

For me, writing is not a search for explanations but a ramble in quest of what informs a place, a hunt for equivalents.

I wouldn't wear makeup, and I didn't like to let boys open the door for me because I felt like it was sexist.