I'm still an artist who's searching, trying to evolve, an artist who - nine times out of ten - is dissatisfied with her work, and beats herself, and goes out there and tries again and again, and falls on her face and looks for new challenges.

In the performing arts you have to have thick, thick, thick skin, because of all the rejection you face on a daily basis, and the fact that work never lasts for very long. But you need thin, thin, thin skin in order to access all of your emotions and your creativity so that you can express it. You can't be dead inside. Otherwise you've got nothing to give. So it's a paradox, that we have to exist in both planes in order to do what we do.

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

I think it's absolutely essential to encourage creativity. I think we come in as these wide-eyed sponges, ready to create and absorb and evolve, and I think more often than not we are squashed, the older we get.

Every human being has a dream. I think what's special about the American Dream is that it implies, given everything that's happened with the history of America, that there is the opportunity to make your dream come true. So I think America signifies opportunity.

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'm taking opportunities as they come; I really am. Not to get too sort of mystical, but I believe in fate. I believe when roles are presented to me in my life they're for a very specific reason, something for me to learn. And it's coming at the right time.