I know that there is still a lot of bitterness and anger, and arguably justifiably so, when you think about how brutal slavery was and what its brutal legacy still is.

I was sometimes called 'coconut' when I was at school.

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.

You can’t have people curating culture in this way when we need to see things in order to reform from them.

If you merely focus on what we already know, then it's not revelatory. You may as well just go and watch a documentary or a few videos on Youtube, and you're good.

I don't have a tailor, but I do love clothes.

Excellence is the best weapon against prejudice.

Find the audience, be excellent, and you will be fine.

I truly believe that one of the things that has been lacking in the USA is a spirit of repentance about the injustices of slavery and the injustices of segregation and racism generally.

We can't afford to deny our past in a bid to be empowered. But what we can do is contextualize the past.

Considering that I'm British and I talk the way I do, I love it when a director takes a chance on me.

I’ve been here before, dreaming myselfbackwards, among grappling hooks of light.True to the seasons, I’ve lived every wordspoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?

Innovation is more attitude than skill.

I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.

Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.

It appears to me that no one has learned a thing; that Wall Street is still operating as if 2008 never happened.

I have a good attitude. And I was born with a happy heart. I'm always looking for things to be better.

Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care.

What is the true test of character unless it be its progressive development in the bustle and turmoil, in the action and reaction of daily life.

I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.

I know. It's shocking to think that the government would try to stick its nose in our ladyparts.