I talked to my mother about it a lot. I asked her what it was like to grow up in New York and Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, and I asked her about a woman leaving her husband. I asked her about how she would feel about that woman, and my mother grew up in the Church Of God In Christ, and she told me that the woman might be isolated because the other women thought she might go and come after their husbands. That's how they thought then.

You don't have to kill somebody to play a murderer. You have to read the script and interpret the character.

It's tricky with monologues, and I never like to use that word. Like I told the actors, you are talking to somebody; there is no such thing as a monologue.

I know, as an actor, I don't like sharing everything with the director. And it's fine if they don't with me.

If it ain't on a page, it ain't on a stage.

I am not going to bury my son! My son is going to bury me!

Got to be who you are in this world, no matter what.