The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.
Ruby Dee
My constant battle is putting aside time wasters, and I have to watch out for procrastination. Staying on the path of something you're trying to create has much to do with having confidence in yourself and in your capacity to realize the things you want out of life.
You can only appreciate freedom when you find yourself in a position to fight for someone else's freedom and not worry about your own.
God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.
We are all a tiger with feelings. An elephant who never forgets. We are tiger, panther, monkey - we are all of these things, all of the life rhythms.
The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.
Before I latched onto the concept of stereotypes, not once did I reckon with the fact that I would never be a 'Hollywood starlet.'
I'm very much interested in getting prisons off the stock market. I'm very much interested in upgrading the public school system... and taking a second look at capital punishment.
I never thought about myself as an activist when we were coming along. I love the people I love. I didn't care whether they could be a Democrat, Republican, communist... anything but a racist.
Black women have to know the historical and everyday struggles of black men, and our men have to know the struggles of black women in America.
Is it safe and sane to only have one political and economic system by which everyone in the world can live? Or can we explore and share? God never made one of anything.
Marriage, like love, is an aspiration. It's a process.
There is a place for people 65 and older that no other age group can fit. We have nothing to lose. Some of us have a couple pennies. We can go out now and really be revolutionaries.
We don't realize how much racism has tainted our self-image as human beings.
The Divine Impulse - it's always safe to follow it. We've got to trust it and go wherever it takes us. Especially women.
The nature of racism is that it grinds down the soul of the man more finely than it does the soul of the woman. When you want to conquer a people or subject it, you destroy the male component.
Oh, I'm impressed with Lorraine Hansberry. She was a genius at whose feet I could sit.
You hear people say, 'We take our Tennessee Williams very seriously. There is no laughter here.' It's full of humor! Not to laugh is a big, bad mistake!
I learned that having great sensitivity is important. But being strong is just as important.
I'm proud of doing 'Long Day's Journey into Night,' for which I won an ACE award.
Just staying together is not a real virtue, if you're not happy. Or you're being denied. Or one person is being squashed. Or you really don't love each other; you're just there out of habit. That doesn't work, no matter how many years you stay together.
I'm an actor who appreciates direction.
I didn't have the kind of talent or personality that kept me dreaming about Hollywood. They don't hire little colored girls to do this or that. After I got that in my head, I took another direction.
We women have a great function to perform. The world needs us.
Well, I didn't grow up with that word 'retirement' as part of my consciousness. I didn't grow up with professionals that retired. I thought retiring was when you are tired and go to bed.
I think all human beings have a godlike, divine power, only most of us don't tap into it.
One reason I didn't trust my writing for so long was that I always considered myself a serious dramatic actor. But people would always laugh when I shared my writing with them. It took my husband to help me see that I really am part humorist.
You have to learn how to be married. You have to learn to love somebody.
OK, boss, I don't mind shuffling, but I won't scratch my head.
I really don't believe in retiring as long as you can breathe.
I have always been against the gangster as hero.
I shined shoes; I did windows.
My whole life is not defined by what Hollywood does.
I remember street corners and pickets and parades. That's what I got teethed on.
I didn't realize it until I was grown how necessary it is for good people to be tough.
I don't know who I would be if I weren't this child from Harlem, this woman from Harlem. It's in me so deep.
I don't remember, as a child, feeling a lack of anything.
I pray with my whole soul that the divide-and-conquerers among us will not triumph over us. We need each other in this world so desperately.
It is so calming, marriage.
You should always be prepared to win. But as much as I tell myself that, I've accepted another kind of role. Racism undercuts expectation, something like that. I'm not saying that to excuse myself from anything, but I've lived all this time, and things don't happen.
The economics of life is against the family.
My stepmother wanted to be an actress.
My experience for myself as a performer is not one of high expectations.
An Oscar nomination? That would be a very satisfying thing, I'm sure. I would appreciate the thought. It would be like taking your hat off as an actor to all the people who walk through you.
I don't think the arts would have been as meaningful to me if I hadn't grown up in Harlem.
Marriage is more complex than we think.
Gangsters lived in the neighborhood. They weren't apart from it. Their relationships with people were both benevolent and scary.
African-Americans have a lot to teach the world.
You're not supposed to go into business with the sole purpose of putting your neighbor out of business. This is not the United States of Corporate America.
I have this deep love for authors. I think that we don't do enough to encourage love of words and love of books.
