I remember being a kid and seeing the 'National Inquirer' at the grocery store checkout line. When somebody actually picked up a copy, it was mortifying. You felt dirty for them. But now it's perfectly acceptable to read something like that. There's absolutely no taboo surrounding that kind of exploitation.

I think there's just an inherent burden of being alive and being a woman. No man would ever admit that, but I think women know it, which is: You know more than men, you know more than most people you're dealing with every day, and you know that's it up to you to make things move forward, and you get paid half as much, but you just do it.

I'm lucky because I have so many clashing cultural, racial things going on: black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese, Cherokee. I can float and be part of any community I want. The thing is, I do identify with being black, and if people don't identify me that way that's their issue. I’m happy to challenge people's understanding of what it looks like to be biracial, because guess what? In the next 50 years, people will start looking more and more like me.

People are not enjoying life because they're trying to be something or brand themselves.

I can fall asleep anywhere.

People are very nice to me, and they've been nice as my career has gotten better and I've gotten more jobs. But the reality is that if I decided tomorrow that I didn't want to act anymore, it's not like people are going to be like, "Please, come back!"

For the most part, it is really nice when people come up to me, because I do think that people who are awkward relate to me, and that's really nice. It's generally good.