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.

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.

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.

My view of myself as an artist expanded because of the time I spent at Cal Arts.

You have such faith, ” he tells me. “Let it be bigger than your fears.

I have tried a lot of things in my life minus one thing ..and that is doubting God. I am so sure of Him that I know that whenever I surrender He kicks in and takes over.

Writing is just building a new world – one character, one place, one maniac at a time.

If you want more then be more. If you want better then be better.

I go to coffee shops for my outlet. Which is just not healthy at all.

California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension.

I shop at thrift shops probably five times a week.

I love the water; it inspires me, even if it is dirty London water that I look at.

I began attempting to write for children under the mistaken assumption that writing for children was easy.

The man who lives beside the water hole does not dream of thirst.