Each person has a literature inside them.

You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.

Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.

Many people are afraid to talk about race because it's so emotionally loaded. We don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. Every day, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.

I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.

When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.

Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance.