All I really want to do is just keep acting, and some of it will stink, and some of it will be really good, and maybe when I'm 85 and presenting an Oscar like Bette Davis did, I can look back and say, 'It was okay, I did all right.'

[On her monologue as the thief 'Fontaine':] People always got things. People always want things. So I provide a service.

Sometimes experience trumps assumption.

You know, be an actor because you love to act. Don't be an actor because you think you're going to get famous, because that's luck.

If you get a little gassy, you've got to let it go. So people used to say to me, 'You're like a whoopee cushion.'

Chocolate and candy. That's what we brought in to our friends. We worked in East Berlin with other artists who were smuggled out to come work in the Western Bloc. It was extraordinary because people in East Berlin just wanted to know what was happening. Music. Fashion. The news. All of the things we get every day.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.