I was a little girl with a pot belly and Afro puffs, hyperactive and overdramatic, and I found the theater and I found my home.

I want to thank all the shoulders of the strong and brave and courageous women that I am standing on.

Pedigree matters: if you break your shoulder trying to open a door, it's much harder to play the game once you get in the room.

The only thing I've ever wanted to do in my entire life is to be on Broadway.

...and if you hear something you know, please sing along. No wait - I take that back - you can't sing along - this is about me now - this is my show.

The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to.

Whatever is the scariest is almost always what I end up choosing.

Theater doesn't bring money in general. That's not why you do it. If you go into theater for money then you've really gone into the wrong business.

Music was all over my house, and all over literally my genetic house, and my house in the literal sense. So I kind of couldn't avoid it.

I think for a lot of people that are in performing arts, it's easy to fall into the trap of starting to confuse what's real life and what's not, because to your body it's all real.

It's easy to spend - especially in this day and age - to spend your time not being in the present. It's very easy to be way ahead. What's tomorrow and the day after that?

There are two kinds of leaders, cowboys and Shepherds. Cowboys drive and Shepherds lead.

Good to know: Doctors can't cure you of being a beast.

Coolidge showed that the best government was the one that got out of the way. When he refrained, the economy grew, the Ku Klux Klan faded, and Americans got Model A's and automobiles.

He who awaits much can expect little.

Mainly, when I go see a show, unfortunately it's more industrial espionage than it is going to actually enjoy a show.

Everyone should be praised by the lips of his neighbor, and not by his own mouth. Everyone should be commended by the work he has done, not by what he wanted to do.

Good sound habits are more important than rules - use concepts.

It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence.

And Louis Freeh was a completely dysfunctional FBI Director, who was actually waging his own private war against the Clinton Administration.

Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.