"My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better."

"I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment."

"When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not."

"I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman, you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that, write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination."

"Disease is an experience of a so-called mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body."

"I don't have a brilliant body at all. I've got very broad shoulders. I've got very big feet. I've also got a very muscular neck."

"Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody."

"I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso."