An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor, I can play anything.

If you had women running the weed market, I think there'd be lots of different products. I know periods. I know how horrible they are, and I know enough people who suffer from them that I really want to speak to them so they can carry something in their pocketbook for relief. Or come home, get in a tub, and soak with something that will actually work.

I've learned to take time for myself and to treat myself with a great deal of love and respect, because I like me.. I think I'm kind of cool.

There are roles I am never considered for. Meryl Streep roles, let's say. Why not? I really wanted to do 'Ironweed,' for example, because the depression era in this country was one of the best for multiracial people, because everybody was poor. Everybody lived in the tents, and under buildings, and under gratings, together.

In the dark times, if you have something to hold on to, which is yourself, you'll survive.

If every American donated five hours a week, it would equal the labor of twenty million full-time volunteers.

I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. 'Ghost' was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I'm black? Oh, am I black?