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.

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.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

I've seen many actors go awry by making the wrong choices early on.

But there is no obvious reason for holding that some normal adults are entitled to make choices for other normal adults, as paternalists of both left and right believe.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

I have a tendency to be lucky and make the right choices based on limited information.

One day I actually took the list into the bathroom and I put it up against my face and looked in the mirror and I realized I had one of two choices, change the list or change myself.

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.

Really, what are the options? Levi's or Wranglers. And you just pick one. It's one of those life choices.

Some of those STINKIN' press people just had to make fun of my decision in joining the show. They also made fun of other choices in my life that I was proud of then and still am now!!!

I'm pro responsible choice. You know, there is choice to abstain, choice to do contraception. There are all kinds of good choices.

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.

Social Security must be preserved and strengthened. But we need to be candid about the costs and willing to make the tough choices that real reform will require.

We have good security. It's hard to get in here. Barring a tactical entry where terrorists come in and hold us hostage, that's about the only thing that could possibly warrant me carrying a gun in the clubhouse. That's highly unlikely, and I admit that. But my personal belief is I don't want to suffer from the poor choices of others.

The futures and ultimate fates of the characters in The Snow Queen are profoundly changed by choices made in their own minds or hearts, as well as choices unexpectedly forced on them by things beyond their control.

Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.

I truly don't have any formula for the choices I make.

In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices; there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem but which we live as an experience, whatever the final result may be.

Under the leadership of this President, the state of the union is not strong. We are being pulled apart rather than pulling together. Our democracy is suffering from the choices being made, and yet we are offered the same tired excuses and unrealistic analyses.

We've got the wind at our back right now. Americans are waking up to the realities of their previous choices. We must keep America moving back to preeminence because our values and conservative ideas are the world's greatest hope.

When I make a film I'm away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say, I love his movies, I love his choices-because he loved them.

In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.

There's almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them.

People assume I'm out there having this great life, but money doesn't erase the pain. When you're young you barrel through life, making choices without thinking of repercussions. A few years down the line, you wake up in a certain place and wonder how the hell you got there.

A human being has been given an intellect to make choices, and we know there are other food sources that do not require the killing of a creature that would protest being killed.

There were a lot of choices to make and I always picked artist. I never once picked doctor, lawyer, firemen or something like that. It was always artist.

In responding to a terrorist attack, there are only two choices - take the fight to the enemy or wait until they hit you again. In my estimation, America chose the first.

Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

Love is as strict as acting. If you want to love somebody, stand there and do it. If you don't, don't. There are no other choices.

I've always been able to make choices that don't embarrass me.

No matter what your choices are, you truly have no control about what people think of you.

Sticking to your values, listening to your instincts, making your own choices is so important.