When I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, 'Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!' I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.

I don't really view communism as a bad thing.

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?

If you're willing to stand for what you believe in ... you won't need advice from me, because you will be able to handle whatever comes.

I'd like everyone to imagine a world where you get a job as Tom, and then the next day you're Tina. Imagine you're in the world where you love what you do, but people say that you can't be who you are.

Children are a quality of life ... when our children are happy, then we are better as human beings.

We're born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.