It's so much more fun to do the work than to talk about it. I will have to admit that. Everybody gets to decide how they feel, and what to take away by themselves, and that's what you hope for. That people will take away different things and have different experiences from the work we do as actors. So I don't like to prescribe how to feel about the work I do.

No matter where you're from, your dreams are valid.

I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying we don't have work for black women. But right now I don't know what's next. I hope that there are more opportunities to come my way.

I went to the Independent Spirit Awards and won.

What I will say is that what I have learned for myself is that I don’t have to be anybody else; and that myself is good enough; and that when I am being true to that self, then I can avail myself to extraordinary thingsYou have to allow for the impossible to be possible.

I think beauty is an expression of love.

I never, in my wildest dreams, could I have thought that the first role I get out of school would lead to an Oscar nomination.