"Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up."

"I succeeded on sort of chutzpah and charm. No technique at all, didn't know what I was doing, but it worked and the character suited me."

"So I continued through my next school, which takes me up to the age of 17, moving from the bottom stream of one year into the bottom stream of the next year, all the way through. I showed other talents which gave me self-respect, which is fine."

"I liked the theater. I liked the people. I liked the time that we worked."

"It's never been a priority for me to concentrate on the likability of the character."

"First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look - no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager."

"Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays."

"Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool."