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.

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

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.

There's a nimble quality to the way a television actor can work. When that muscle gets strong it's a very valuable thing.

There is no such thing as helplessness. It's just another word for giving up.

Happiness depends upon two things—pleasing God, and then pleasing yourself.

Miracles should run after you and not you running after miracles.

President [George] Bush made the U.S. absolutely the leader, between its own PEPFAR, and it's been by far the biggest Global Fund donor. That's a legacy.

I think for an artist there are so many things to make pictures of now, that everyone else may be suffering, but at least artists will just be stimulated by it all.

The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, love do not require coupons.

In Science, it is when we take some interest in the great discoverers and their lives that it becomes endurable, and only when we begin to trace the development of ideas that it becomes fascinating.

Long time no see. I only pray the caliber of your questions has improved.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

If you really want to dream, be fully awake.