The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you.

I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.

Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.

I needed to make my wig ogg because I no longer wanted to apologize for who I am

The sentiment that I had a little trouble with was the idea that, "You change the school, you change the community." I couldn't wrap my mind around that.

Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.

I had several teachers who inspired me, in both the public school system and the Upward Bound program. I needed several, because I lived in such abject poverty and dysfunction. And they're still in my life today, because I consider them to be friends, actually.