Actress

I respect the fact that a director has studied the text and the road map of work before us, the subtleties, interconnections, underpinnings... His job is to paint the entire picture and knows all the colors that have to be in it.

I'm proud of doing 'Long Day's Journey into Night,' for which I won an ACE award.

I didn't realize it until I was grown how necessary it is for good people to be tough.

I never remember, like, saying, 'Well, I'm going to belong - join the civil rights movement.'

I remember street corners and pickets and parades. That's what I got teethed on.

Marriage, like love, is an aspiration. It's a process.

The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.

Just staying together is not a real virtue, if you're not happy. Or you're being denied. Or one person is being squashed. Or you really don't love each other; you're just there out of habit. That doesn't work, no matter how many years you stay together.

Racism is a very insidious thing. It's dangerous to the psyche, to mind and body. It erodes the self-confidence. And I don't know how we get through it.

'Commitment' is a marvelous word.

I have this deep love for authors. I think that we don't do enough to encourage love of words and love of books.

I'm an actor who appreciates direction.

One reason I didn't trust my writing for so long was that I always considered myself a serious dramatic actor. But people would always laugh when I shared my writing with them. It took my husband to help me see that I really am part humorist.

I don't remember, as a child, feeling a lack of anything.

Black women have to know the historical and everyday struggles of black men, and our men have to know the struggles of black women in America.

I really don't believe in retiring as long as you can breathe.

You can't be all you are meant to be if you think you are better than others, and you can't be all you are meant to be if you think you are less than others, either.

The nature of racism is that it grinds down the soul of the man more finely than it does the soul of the woman. When you want to conquer a people or subject it, you destroy the male component.

I'm very much interested in getting prisons off the stock market. I'm very much interested in upgrading the public school system... and taking a second look at capital punishment.

My experience for myself as a performer is not one of high expectations.