Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch-what make you go beyond the norm.

We have to support our own films. If we don't, how can we expect others to support them?

I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.

Ali... we should have gone to see that movie. Malcolm X was another one.

In my early years, there were a number of experiences that made me decide I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. There were a number of issues I wanted to address. And I wanted to use my career as a platform.

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch-what make you go beyond the norm.

You never know what motivates you.

When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused.

I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.

When I told my mother that I wanted to be an actress, she said, you can't live here and do that, and so I moved out. I was determined to prove her wrong because she was so sure that I was going to go astray. And that's the juice that kept me going.

I don't condemn anyone for making their choices. If someone chooses those roles, fine. But not for me. When someone stops me and says, You're the reason I became an actress, that lets me know I made the right decision.

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew.

My mother was an introvert and quite religious. And we were brought up in the church. And when she learned that I wanted to act, she simply said: 'You cannot live here and do that.'

One lady told me that before she saw 'Sounder' she didn't believe black people could love each other, have deep relationships in the same way as white people.

The choices of roles I made had to do with educating and entertaining. And as a result I found myself working only every two or three years.

Knock wood, but I started acting professionally when I was 16, and I've always been able to support myself since then.

Didn't the other guys tell you? Nobody dunks on Manute B-O-L!

I tell my colleagues that it is actually all right to make mistakes, and I am worried when they do not make them, because it means that they either hide them from me or are not trying hard enough.

I thought I was clever by greeting casting agents in my Australian accent and then switching to an American one during the performance. But the Australian accent seemed to put them off. Now it's the opposite; they love Australians. And with my thick Californian accent I now have a problem convincing them I'm Australian.

Hollywood is a strange place if youre in trouble. Everybody thinks its contagious.

When I'm by myself, I never play music. I have a lot of it, for a girl, but I don't listen to it a lot. I hate picking music out; I'm not good at it.

If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.

Falling in love is great. It colors your whole world and makes your days inspiring. But for some reason some people find it too scary. They decided its to better hold that part of their feelings.

In a way, writing is an incredible act of individualism, producing your language, and yet to use it from the heart of a crowd as opposed to as an individual performance is a conflicting thing. I do stand alone, and yet it's not about being an individual or being ambitious.

I'm sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all of this endless time where two weeks before Christmas feels like ten years. I used to go to bed to try and go to sleep to try and make it go faster.

I love what I do. I'm appreciative and I'm still competitive. I still love baseball, but it doesn't consume me. If I can't do it anymore, then I go home and do something else. It's not the end of the world. It's just the end of your career.

When the sommelier Enrico Bernardo moved to Paris from Italy nearly two decades ago, the world of French gastronomy brutally rejected him. No matter that he had won the competition for best sommelier in Italy; when he asked 30 restaurateurs for work in their wine cellars, all turned him down.

I think something that forces financial institutions to write down underwater mortgages, I think, would be a sensible thing to do.

As a culture or a civilisation, we are a bit juvenile; it's like 'Oh, I have all this power, whoa, this is so cool, I can transform the earth and I can produce all this wealth. But we're blinded by our success in a naive way. There's more to life, actually, and I think the sustainability issue is also helpful in reminding us about that.

As a young woman in politics, with few women around, you start to subconsciously behave like men in politics. That comes across as quite hard, tough and humorless, but you're trying to be taken seriously.

Little did I know that there's nothing more competitive in the world than a professional ballroom dancer. They are as competitive as Olympic athletes.

I want to make it to Heaven and be as good an influence on others as I can in that process.

Career is important, but nothing really supersedes my roles as a mother.

One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot.

Hip-hop went through different stages, from the beginning in the streets of the Bronx, to the whole Tri-State area and then to the rest of the United States and the rest of the world.

Clearly the success of the Netflix model, releasing the entire season of 'House of Cards' at once, proved one thing: The audience wants the control. They want the freedom. If they want to binge as they've been doing on 'House of Cards' and lots of other shows, we should let them binge.

An author's characters do what he wants them to do.

I've had a very interesting career. I get to do amazing things and work with amazing people and travel and learn languages - things most people don't get the opportunity to do.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you've got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky's the limit.