As an actress, I have put myself out there as an independent black woman, a single mom, a go-getter, a hustler who isn't afraid to survive.

I created this character that I still have of a guy who is a little bit of a nincompoop - I'm poking fun at street hustlers. I didn't quite make as much money as one would gambling, but it was a lot safer.

Diverting the internal traffic between the Writer as Angel of Light and the Writer as Hustler is that scribbling child in a grown-up body wondering if anybody is listening.

When 'Penthouse' and 'Hustler' came along, they confused what I was trying to do. Before they arrived, we were perceived as a sophisticated men's magazine.

I am the product of hustlers who taught me how to do it. They gave me a hustler's ambition. Not a bad thing to get from your parents. But hustling only gets you so far. You have to trust yourself. And you have to be ready to fall on your face and be okay when it happens.

You've got to know how to hustle. I got a lot of inspiration from my parents. My father was definitely a hustler. With six kids in the house, you always got to be hustling. And my mom, she's got sick work ethic.

I've said the election of Obama has made the hustler less relevant. People took it in a way that I was almost dismissing what I am. And I was like, 'No, it's a good thing!'

The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.

I would say I was always very ambitious and goal-oriented, but rather than being just a go-getter hustler, now I surrender a lot more and I trust my path a lot more.

If I didn't have a gig, I used to ring up all the comedy clubs across the country and go, 'If anyone drops out, I can be there.' Normally, someone would ring you up the day of. It's just perseverance, being scrappy, being a hustler. The first few years, a lot of it was under-the-table work, so that was good. I think I can say that now.

I don't care what a man is as long as he treats me right. He can be a gambler, a hustler, someone everybody else thinks is obnoxious, I don't care so long as he's straight with me and our dealings are fair.

I met a hustler at a dinner party. He had been invited because I was looking for an adviser to help me with the street scenes. So we put him on the film.

Marriage equality is a hustler's feeding frenzy of gold-diggers. I campaigned for marriage equality in Maryland because I believe we should have the right to it, but I personally don't want to get married. I don't want to imitate the traditions of heterosexual people. I hate weddings: they make me uneasy.

I've always been a hustler.

I will concede to you one thing - 'Hustler' is offensive, even to the point of being iconoclastic. That's our purpose - to be offensive.

I'm a rapper but I'm more of a hustler.

As an actress, I have put myself out there as an independent black woman, a single mom, a go-getter, a hustler who isn't afraid to survive.

The hip-hop community is made up of a lot of hustlers. Everybody is trying to get theirs, and everybody is trying to eat.

I grew up in a working class family. People thought I might go work at a mill. My mom wanted me to learn how to lay carpet because she was concerned about my future. Nobody had high hopes for me. But I was a hustler.

Producing suits me because I have a business mind and a business sensibility. I was a street hustler. I did whatever it took. I sold whatever I could sell. I'm a good organiser.

I was a comfort factor. I'm not a hustler.

I wanted to start creating opportunities for actors out there that weren't so cut-and-dried... My ultimate goal with Outlier is to give these young creatives and young creative hustlers the opportunity to leave their fingerprint on the world.

There's Jay-Z, who morphs a certain street hustler's cool and indifference into CEO extravagance. But for all his prominence, Jay-Z hasn't written a lot of crossover hits.

Focused. I'm a hustler. And my hustle is trying to figure out the best ways to do what I like without having to do much else.

I see N.Y. hip-hop like I see N.Y. streets. N.Y. streets are grimy; it's a grind. N.Y. rappers are hustlers - whatever sound is in, we can adapt to that; there's nothing wrong with that.

I identify myself as a hustler since I was a young kid.

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

There was a guy that was friends with my father, a very well-known and powerful hustler on the Eastern seaboard. He was a very interesting guy who would literally rent a passenger van and would take the poor kids from the ghettos and black neighborhoods down to the sporting goods store and just spend money. Buy them whatever they want.

I have two people that I mainly look up to: Magic Johnson is one of them. He just blew everything out of the water. He didn't make much money in basketball, but since basketball has been over, he's investing in the community and making a lot of money at the same time. The next one I look up to is Sean Combs, who has always been a hustler.

She is such a doer, Cara - she is so ambitious. She has always known what she wants, and she's a hustler. Sometimes I call her, and I'm like, 'You need to help me hustle,' and she is like, 'Come on!'

Part of the success of Girls Who Code is that I am a hustler. When people ask what my biggest strength is, it's that I'm shameless. I will ask people for help even when I don't know them.