The people who can be helping to make movies that have blacks and Latinos and women and all that - that movie doesn't come to you. Because the idea is that there's no place for black movies.

Did you know that we are the only people in the United States who have to have their voting rights okayed every couple of years?

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

[On writing to Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple:] I told her I would play a Venetian blind, dirt on the floor, anything.

If you don't look out for others, who will look out for you?

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.

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