The real truth is that [Harriet Tubman ] spirit is so powerful that it consumes you. I was literally reduced to basic breath and blinks while she inhabited my vessel and told her story through me.

We're living in a time where we all got to stay woke !

Understanding that what it is that you're doing isn't limited to the roles and the rejection, it's bigger than that, it's about your purpose in life.

Study and know that we are always a student of the craft well after we've completed any course of study... and approach the work as a servant, not a star.

I felt validated and valued , and here was this woman [Whoopi Goldberg ] inside my television screen who gave me a voice.

[I want to be remembered] as a small piece of the puzzle sent here to serve a bigger picture.

[Harriet Tubman] lived such a full, complex, and irrefutably-dynamic life that all the craft in the world would be insufficient in honoring her legacy.

I did my homework, of course, by inhaling as much literature as was available to find, so that when it was time to shoot I could hopefully exhale [ Harriet Tubman ].

An opportunity to honor the legacy of the lives drawn into the lines in my face, the broad of my nose, the dark of my eyes, the fullness of my lips, and coal in my complexion.

Rosa Parks was primed, she had the Civil Rights Movement behind her, she didn't just decide to sit on the bus, it was strategic.

I am indebted to [my grandmothers] always for cradling me in the heart of Christ and encouraging my passion to press towards the mark of the high calling on my life, wherever that takes me.

Oh, China. How I have missed you.''And I have missed you, Eliza. But don't worry, next time my aim will be better.

Water purling between the rocks, weed under the surface like green hair in the wind.

Life is a game and true love is a trophy.

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

With luck, a writer capable of producing both Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb will not remain unappreciated for long.

Journalism is organized gossip.

Religious men are and must be heretics now- for we must not pray, except in a "form" of words, made beforehand- or think of God but with a prearranged idea.

Fortune may crowd a man's life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them.

I have tons of jokes with moments in them over the years in stand-up that don't get a laugh but I love them so they stay.

A half-century after racing the Russians to the moon, the U.S. is barely suiting up in the international race to secure interests in the Arctic.