When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they’ll remember and be kind to someone else. And it’ll become like a wildfire.
In the dark times, if you have something to hold on to, which is yourself, you’ll survive.
When I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.
We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.
Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.
Art and life are subjective. Not everybody’s gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.
It never occurs to me that there are things I can’t do.
If there wasn’t something called acting, they would probably hospitalize people like me.
We’re born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.
All I really want to do is just keep acting, and some of it will stink, and some of it will be really good, and maybe when I’m 85 and presenting an Oscar like Bette Davis did, I can look back and say, ‘It was okay, I did all right.’
I don’t believe that there is any good career move or bad career move. I believe there are only the things that make me happy.
If you want to be somebody, if you want to go somewhere, you’ve got to wake up and pay attention.
I don’t have pet peeves like some people. I have whole kennels of irritation.
When I was doing ensemble theater and comedy work, I felt I had some talents. But when I started doing my shows in Berkeley and found that I could be funny on my own, I was shocked.
My mother’s great. She has the major looks. She could stop you from doing anything, through a closed door even, with a single look. Without saying a word, she has that power to rip out your tonsils.
You don’t want to think something might be racist, but it might be, because your gut is telling you it is.
Normal is in the eye of the beholder.
I used my imagination to make the grass whatever color I wanted it to be.
I always wore sneakers when I wanted to. It was always about being comfortable and being myself.