What do you want? What do you want your life to be? What do you want your testimony to be? Go for it!

People who are alone all the time never grow. Those hermits just stay the same. It's only through relationships. Relationships change us and make us grow.

The reason I became an actress is because I wanted my acting to reflect life as it is. I want to put truth on the screen. I want real women to see real women on the screen.

I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.

When you're working as an actor, you don't think that when you get out of school, it's going to be so hard to get a job. Just to get a job. Any job. Whatsoever. You don't think that people are going to see you in a certain way.

It feels like my hard work has paid off, but at the same time, I still have the impostor, you know, syndrome. I still feel like I'm going to wake up, and everybody's going to see me for the hack I am.

You have to dare to make a choice that may be considered unorthodox in a role, but when you're working as if there are tons of people watching you, that's not necessarily a good thing.

I think tapping into one's power and one's potential is a very frightening thing.

I've always felt like I was an actor for hire. And almost apologetic for being a woman of color, trying to stifle that voice. But I don't feel that way in Shondaland. I feel like I am accepted into a world where I'm a part of the narrative - I'm a part of it.

If it were just a dream to be famous, then I probably would have died a really quick death, because there is nothing about me that equals fame. I'm not a standup comedian. I don't sing.

This is the richest country in the world. There's no reason kids should be going to school hungry. Food is something that everyone should have. It just is.

I didn't aspire to be just a celebrity; I aspired to be an actress... I always wanted to be respected as someone who knew their craft.

'Fences' is under the headline of the project of my lifetime. It is the most perfect and undeniably developed narrative that I've ever worked on.

When you're poor, you are invisible. Every poor person will tell you nobody sees you. So being famous was me just wanting to be seen.

I suffered from low self-esteem for much of my life. And now to feel like maybe something that I'm projecting or saying could mean something to someone means a lot to me.

I always feel terrified whenever I put my work out there to be seen, to be scrutinized. I think it's a very vulnerable thing that we are asked to do.

That's why I do what I do, and that's why I wanted to be an actress from the time I was six years old. If I can't effectively move people, then I would prefer not to do it.

I was bullied at school. The black girl in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in 1973. There'd be 8 or 10 boys; I would count them as I was running.

Vanity destroys your work. That's the one thing you have to let go of as an actor. I don't care how sexy or beautiful any woman is. At the end of the day, she has to take her makeup off. At the end of the day, she's more than just pretty.

If I have to be at work at five A.M., I will get up at three and work out. I run. I do weights. I'm very toned. I'm like every other woman. I'd love to be 10 pounds or 20 pounds lighter. If I'm not, I'm OK with that, too. I'm good as long as I'm healthy.

I heard about the book and I said, 'Oh my god, I've got to read this book,' and I didn't know that a white woman wrote it. Nobody said that to me, they just said, 'The Help - Oh my god, you've got to read it.' Everyone failed to mention it was a white woman, I think, because nobody really wants to talk about race.

I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.

I just want different narratives for people of color, especially women of color. I just want something that's different. I don't want us to be put in a box. I want it to be kind of a redefinition of who were are. If I can even achieve that in a tiny way, I'll be good. I'll be good.

In life, you know, they do this in focus groups; if you were in such and such circumstance, what would you do? Well, you never know what you're going do unless you're faced with it.

I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't! I thought I could do what they did. And what I didn't do well, I thought people were going to give me the opportunity to do well, because maybe they saw my talent, so they would give me a chance. I had no idea that they would see me completely different.

I'm the journeyman actor that you saw in one scene here, two scenes there. I've been eking out a living doing theater - Broadway, Off Broadway - film supporting roles, that I'm just excited to be a part of the conversation.

I don't know how I got a great husband. I mean, God just blessed me with that one. Because - trust me - before him, I was not making good choices. So I was just absolutely blessed. I just prayed for that man He's my secret weapon because he's so gregarious, and he's so filled with joy. Me? I can sometimes be more cynical, and I'm very shy.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we're complicated, that we are indeed messy, that we do our best with what we've been given. We come into the world exactly like you. It's just that there are circumstances in the culture that are dictated and put on our lives that we have to fight against.

I have had issues in the past with the characters and the limitations of the characters and the structure of the narratives given to me as a woman of color.

You can't be perceived as 'the black actress who doesn't get the same kind of roles as the white actress.' You gotta run the same race. You gotta give the same quality of performances. You gotta have the same standard of excellence, even though people know that you're coming to the race in a deficit. That's just what life is about.

We all have different narratives; all of our narratives are at different stages of development.