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.

I grew up in a time when it would never have occurred to anyone to tell me there was anything I couldn't do.

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

Things happen to you out of luck, and if you get to stick around it's because you're talented.

I fear waking up one morning and finding out my life was all for nothing. We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark. When you're kind to someone in trouble, you hope they remember and are kind to someone else and so on. Soon it will be like a wildfire.

Most women do not have [abortions] with some sort of party going on. It is the hardest decision that a woman ever has to make . . . One of the reasons we've had to make this decision is because so many women were found bleeding, dead, with hangers in their bodies because they were doing it themselves. The idea of this was to make it safe and clean - that was the reason the law came into effect.

The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American.