Quotes

[on her commitment to choose only positive images] Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch -- what make you go beyond the norm. The choices of roles I made had to do with educating and entertaining. And as a result, I found myself working only every two or three years.

One lady told me that before she saw Sounder (1972), she didn't believe black people could love each other, have deep relationships in the same way as white people.

[of 'trances' she seems to occupy to prepare for roles] I'm looking inside myself. Inside of me is where this character is coming from, and I was feeling a sense of who this woman can be... I am the character [on set] until I go home.

How do you project a character if you don't have a sense of where she is from? I've always just gotten on a plane to go to the area to get a sense of what it is like, to smell it, feel the earth, hear people talk, go to the marketplaces. Being there [in Texas] I understood very clearly why my character [Carrie Watts in "The Trip to Bountiful"] longed to return because I was myself mesmerized by the beauty of the place and the tender enfolding of the gulf wind.

Age is just a number. Life and aging are the greatest gifts that we could possibly ever have.

I am the sum total of each one of the women I have played. That they were able to survive the times, and the way in which they did it, made me a stronger person and allowed me to truly believe that all things are possible.

When it comes to staying right side up in this world, a black woman needs at least three things. The first is a quiet spot of her own, a place away from the nonsense. The second is a stash of money, like the cash my mother kept hidden in the slit of her mattress. The last is several drops of cayenne pepper, always at the ready. Sprinkle that on your food before you eat it and it'll kill any lurking bacteria. The powder does the trick as well, but I prefer the liquid because it hits the bloodstream quickly. Particularly when eating out, I won't touch a morsel to my lips 'til it's speckled with with cayenne.