When I look in the mirror, I see a woman who is happy.

If your dream only includes you, it's too small.

Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.

Figure out what you need to do to be the heroine of your own story.

Don't wait for permission to do something creative.

If you're doing something outside of dominant culture there's not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.

When you're in your lane, there's no traffic.

We have to find new ways to work without permission, new ways to turn corners and go through doors that are closed off to us to create our own audiences and our own material independently.

I've passed along some advice that Oprah [Winfrey] gave to me: When something bad is happening, it's not happening to you; it's happening for you.

Stop asking, start doing.

If your work is solid, it really doesn't matter what people you know because good work starts to rise to the top.

Each time a language dies, another flame goes out, another sound goes silent.

True courage is a result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable.

Painters love paint itself: so much that they spend years trying to get paint to behave the way they want it to.

Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.

Obedience is a penance of reason, and, on that account, a sacrifice more acceptable than all corporal penances and mortifications.

A film should be like a rock in the shoe.

You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.

My garden is a forest ledge Which older forest s bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound!

To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.

Prisons where people can't even work is the worst punishment you can think of. And I don't think we should put all convicts in such facilities where people are deprived of their freedom.