You never know what motivates you.

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.

I'd never want to be trapped. I never like to stay in one place too long. I always flit around, I never settle anywhere. So being married would be being trapped.

I really like Wisconsin. I enjoy it. I enjoy the people. I enjoy the fact that it's not L.A. or New York. And there's some sense of normalcy here - people having children in homes they can somewhat afford to live in.

Unlike in my young days I'm not able to eat, drink and sleep tennis.

Don't be afraid of your fears. They're not there to scare you. They're there to let you know that something is worth it.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

The first stage in a technology's advance is that it'll fall below a critical price. After it falls below a critical price, it will tend, if it's successful, to rise above a critical mass, a penetration.

The doomsayers of the 1970s were wrong about how quickly the world would run out of oil, but not about the dangers that hydrocarbon consumption posed to the global environment, especially with respect to climate change.

Never marry at all Dorian. Men marry because they are tired women because they are curious both are disappointed.

We are at a punctuation point in human history where the Industrial Age and institutions have finally come to their logical conclusion. They have essentially run out of gas.

Words are the small change of thought.

I believe the people that buy my music believes in me.

In a lot of cases, writers discover that the novel needs to begin later in the action than they'd first thought.

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.

We call a child's mind 'small' simply by habit; perhaps it is larger than ours is, for it can take in almost anything without effort.

I don't like to have to pan for gold when I read.

I've had to whine for everything I've ever really wanted.

Hamas, also elected to governmental leadership in Palestine, includes the jihadists, people who have declared war on the United States of America and its ally, Israel.

You never fall in love by yourself, love captures you. Love comes to you when you don't need it really, and it comes to an end when you need it the most.

I would say one must just keep working hard and not lose faith. You don't know when destiny is going to come your way, what opportunity comes your way.

Everybody wants to do 'The View.' It's this iconic show. When I worked at the White House, I used to watch the beginning to see what they were talking about. If a political topic was on their radar, I used it as ammunition with the president or the White House staff.

It's difficult for people to visualize from my drawings what it's going to be, so I often find myself talking them into things that they go along with, and when they see what's been made, they are surprised.

Because when everyone dreams, but only a few realize their dreams, that makes cowards of us all.

What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.

The driver that you have to sell on safety shouldnt be driving.