And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned.

That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.

As human beings, what makes us able to empathize with people is a connection that is not necessarily understood mentally.

It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.

I come from a loving, supportive family, and my mother taught me that there are more valuable ways to achieve beauty than just through your external features. She was focused on compassion and respect, and those are the things that ended up translating to me as beauty.

Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.

I grew up watching foreign programs - American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. 'The Color Purple' was the first time I saw people who looked like me.