What I love about being an actress is being able to really look into myself and understand another human being.

What he showed me was not what I had to get, but what I already have. I am just myself, and who I am is a lot.

I am having a good time doing nothing.

There's always something to suggest that you'll never be who you wanted to be. Your choice is to take it or keep on moving.

What I love about being an actress is being able to really look into myself and understand another human being.

The stubbornness I had as a child has been transmitted into perseverance. I can let go but I don't give up. I don't beat myself up about negative things.

When I am presented with good work, I accept it. Wherever it is.

A person can be big, because of spirit. A person can be big because of their position in the family, the hierarchy in the family. That role has been played by women who are quite thin.

Any time women come together with a collective intention, it's a powerful thing. Whether it's sitting down making a quilt, in a kitchen preparing a meal, in a club reading the same book, or around the table playing cards, or planning a birthday party, when women come together with a collective intention, magic happens.

As artists, we do the work that we do. Receiving an award or not receiving an award in no way diminishes one's talent or value.

Every role affords me something different in the way of understanding, and that's really why you take these roles, not to show that thing that people talk about of showing what you can do - that has nothing to do with anything.

Historically, if you look at great civilizations, why do they crumble? Is it because of what's outside or because of something internal? It's always internal. It is.

How is it that you profess love for God but can't accept another human being?

I love theater. To have the people onstage right there, to be working in concert with other artists, this is a like a school of fish moving together.

I think the real understanding comes when we recognize our humanity in each other. That's not just between blacks and whites. That's between all religions as well.

If the playwright knew every little thing about his play, why bother? There must be discovery all the time, otherwise why bother to do it?

If there are no films or plays of interest to me, I don't go. I know how to go to a museum or a library or pick up a good magazine or I can watch the sun set. I know how to live. There's a whole creation out there full of magic and wonder to be explored.

Let me just say that to imagine racism does not exist is imagination. And to imagine that it does not create its own set of problems is true imagination. So let's not imagine that racism is gone, extinguished, because it's not. We are seeing this in the top levels of the political arena, and we are seeing it very, very plainly.

Let's just say that the theater is not for the faint of heart.

Loving oneself isn't hard, when you understand who and what 'yourself' is. It has nothing to do with the shape of your face, the size of your eyes, the length of your hair or the quality of your clothes. It's so beyond all of those things and it's what gives life to everything about you. Your own self is such a treasure.

Success for me means being able to work. I don't look at so much at what I've done as much as I look to what I will do.

There was a time when I couldn't watch sitcoms for a while because it was just cacophony, it was just noise.

There's all kinds of mothers, so to use the label 'mother' and to think you really understood all that a human being is because she's a mother, is a mistake.

Things have a way of moving to the left, and then they move back to the right before somebody finds themselves in the center. That seems to be the nature of the creative world. It's not stagnant. I don't get upset about it.

We are told there is not enough money for education, but somehow there is enough money for people to raise billions of dollars to defeat somebody in an election? Oh! Okay! Does that make sense?

What's in front of you is a whole world of experiences beyond your imagination. Put yourself, and your growth and development, first.

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists.

For me, being in front of the camera and training go hand in hand.

I define success as being comfortable with yourself and your life. And that is about as good as it gets, really.

Being injured is something that happens in this sport. Anybody who gets into it understands that.