"It's being willing to walk away that gives you strength and power - if you're willing to accept the consequences of doing what you want to do."

"When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire."

"I'm fighting the label of 'Black' actress simply because it's very limiting in people's eyes, especially people who are making movies."

"I don't have pet peeves I have whole kennels of irritation."

"It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor."

"Johnny Rotten. He's a big fan of mine. I used to see him out in the audience in England and he'd stand up and holler. He's funny. Smart too, and a nice guy. Don't think he's a jerk because he isn't."

"If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain."

"And, in a funny way, each death is different and you mourn each death differently and each death brings back the death you mourned earlier and you get into a bit of a pile-up."