I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.

When Denzel [Washington] first called me on the phone after we'd just done a reading of the film ["Fences"]. He said, "Oh Viola it was so good, wasn't it?! I'm gonna tell Russell [Hornsby] to lose a little bit of weight and..." I was just sitting there thinking, why is he calling me? And I told him, "Denzel don't you tell me to lose weight!" He said, "I'm not telling you to lose weight! I can't believe you would say that."

Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.

Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.

When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself.

I would love to star in a remake of Thelma and Louise. Yep, that's the one I'd be interested in redoing.

I think that you always want to gravitate towards people who absolutely are great at what they do and go for authenticity.