To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed.
Sidney Poitier
The journey has been incredible from its beginning.
So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.
I wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.
I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.
I lived in a country where I couldn't live where I wanted to live. I lived in a country where I couldn't go where I wanted to eat. I lived in a country where I couldn't get a job, except for those put aside for people of my colour or caste.
So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.
I always wanted to be someone better the next day than I was the day before.
My mother was the most amazing person. She taught me to be kind to other women. She believed in family. She was with my father from the first day they met. All that I am, she taught me.
We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists... in the loved one, perfection.
There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.
If I'm remembered for having done a few good things, and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.
I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.
I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.
I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.
I cannot be understood in three minutes.
I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place.
I was fortunate enough to have been raised to a certain point before I got into the race thing. I had other views of what a human is, so I was never able to see racism as the big question. Racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects to life.
Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures.
So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it's a positive one.
When I set out to become an actor, I had set myself a standard.
But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots.
I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.
In America, it is difficult to be your own man.
I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being.
To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.
I wanted to explore the values that are at work, underpinning my life.
My father was the quintessential husband and dad.
I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.
I was born two months early, and everyone had given up on me. But my mother insisted on my life.
I learned to hear silence. That's the kind of life I lived: simple. I learned to see things in people around me, in my mom, dad, brothers and sisters.
If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you're not going to get very far. You simply won't.
My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.
But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.
I'm going to quit writing.
In my case, the body of work stands for itself... I think my work has been representative of me as a man.
I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me.
I had two roles for which I compromised.
A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another.
My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that's my dad. And he was a very good man.
As a man, I've been representative of the values I hold dear. And the values I hold dear are carryovers from the lives of my parents.
I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.
History passes the final judgment.
I get offered work these days.
Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's.
So I'm OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was.
I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values.
I'll always be chasing you... Glory.
Far as I can tell, I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging over my belt, and I still have all of my teeth.
I sometimes like the pictures photographers take of me.
