If you get a little gassy, you’ve got to let it go. So people used to say to me, ‘You’re like a whoopee cushion.’
I grew up in a time when it would never have occurred to anyone to tell me there was anything I couldn’t do.
If You don’t like Gay Marriage, Don’t Marry a Gay Person.
The Africans know I’m not an African. I’m an American.
I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. ‘Ghost’ was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I’m black? Oh, am I black?
Sitting at the table during Color Purple and looking up and suddenly realizing I was acting in front of Steven Spielberg, was pretty cool. It was pretty good.
I have witnessed things the ancients would have called miracles, but they are not miracles. They are the products of someone’s dream, and they happen as the result of hard work.
No matter what you say to yourself, you do want to win. You try to look casual, like you’re not thinking, ‘oh, please pick me.’
We’re dealing with old issues that aren’t ours. We carry them and we pass them on to those who come after us. I am hoping to crack some of those.
If you read to me I could tell you everything that was read. They didn’t know what it was. They knew I wasn’t lazy, but what was it?
If you don’t look out for others, who will look out for you?
Her least favorite thing: VOLUNTARY IGNORANCE.
The people who can be helping to make movies that have blacks and Latinos and women and all that – that movie doesn’t come to you. Because the idea is that there’s no place for black movies.
There are times when I haven’t been proud of America or really proud. But there have been times that I’ve been incredibly proud of the country.
I eat eight bags of chips in one sitting, and then nothing for a day or two. I learned that my body thought it was starving, so it would hold on to fat.
The most important thing is that you have to listen to your truths, desires and wants. And you have to believe you deserve all of it.
People have the power we give them. Words have the power we give them.
I can do anything. I can be anything. No one ever told me I couldn’t. No one ever expressed this idea that I was limited to any one thing, and so I think in terms of what’s possible, not impossible.
Art is long, life is short.
Before you judge me, look in the mirror.
I should not ever live with anyone, because I just don’t have the patience for it. I’m very cranky around other people.