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.

The first time I cut all my hair off was when I was 19. I just got fed up going to the salon every week. I'd had enough! On a whim, it was off. It's low-maintenance.

Your value is in yourself; the other stuff will come and go.

[My mother] always said I was beautiful and I finally believed her at some point.

Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV.

There is no shame in black beauty.

I remember in my very first fitting, costume designer Patricia Norris gave me a garment with these intricate stitches - stitches over stitches, because it had been repaired so many times. Once I put it on, she told me that it belonged to an actual slave woman. My heart just stopped. Each one of the stitches had a story, you know. Just recognizing this period I was going to be dancing with was a "come to Jesus" moment.