At the end of the day, I had to remain dedicated to historical accuracy.

If your dream only includes you, it's too small.

Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.

Figure out what you need to do to be the heroine of your own story.

Don't wait for permission to do something creative.

If you're doing something outside of dominant culture there's not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.

When you're in your lane, there's no traffic.

We have to find new ways to work without permission, new ways to turn corners and go through doors that are closed off to us to create our own audiences and our own material independently.

I've passed along some advice that Oprah [Winfrey] gave to me: When something bad is happening, it's not happening to you; it's happening for you.

Stop asking, start doing.

If your work is solid, it really doesn't matter what people you know because good work starts to rise to the top.

Every change comes in a challenge.

Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day.

Anchor your faith in the plain and simple truths of the gospel.

I think the role of the Federal Reserve is enormously exaggerated.

The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.

I make myself into a new image in order to produce new images.

A man has one, a cat has nine, and in between it's killing time.

What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on.

I'm sorry to burden you,' she said. She felt like a crybaby. 'What can we do with our stories,' he said, 'but tell them?

I'm terrible about people wanting to take pictures with me. I'm a giant baby about it. They treat you like a cartoon. There's nothing you can do except make light of it.