'Commitment' is a marvelous word.
— Ruby Dee
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.
I don't remember, as a child, feeling a lack of anything.
It's getting increasingly difficult to be a dreamer under any circumstances.
You have to learn how to be married. You have to learn to love somebody.
Black History Month is fine, but we need more months of the year to celebrate all the people on this earth. After all, we're all creatures of the same God.
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.
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 learned that having great sensitivity is important. But being strong is just as important.
I do remember the numbers runners, I do remember the poverty and bread lines. Harlem stays with you forever.
You can only appreciate freedom when you find yourself in a position to fight for someone else's freedom and not worry about your own.
My whole life is not defined by what Hollywood does.
I really don't believe in retiring as long as you can breathe.
I shined shoes; I did windows.
Life can't die. It's a contradiction.
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.
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.
You hear people say, 'We take our Tennessee Williams very seriously. There is no laughter here.' It's full of humor! Not to laugh is a big, bad mistake!
Marriage is more complex than we think.
The white actresses I have known have been allowed to do 10 times more than I shall ever do.
The economics of life is against the family.
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.
African-Americans have a lot to teach the world.
When I was young, I dreamt of being a starlet in Hollywood. But there comes a point in every African American's life when you realize the limitations, that you could only play maids or some little supporting role. Even Lena Horne couldn't get good parts.
A nation's youths shouldn't be sent off to die.
I remember street corners and pickets and parades. That's what I got teethed on.
You should always be prepared to win. But as much as I tell myself that, I've accepted another kind of role. Racism undercuts expectation, something like that. I'm not saying that to excuse myself from anything, but I've lived all this time, and things don't happen.
I never remember, like, saying, 'Well, I'm going to belong - join the civil rights movement.'
Well, I didn't grow up with that word 'retirement' as part of my consciousness. I didn't grow up with professionals that retired. I thought retiring was when you are tired and go to bed.
I think you mustn't tell your body, you mustn't tell your soul, 'I'm going to retire.' You may be changing your life emphasis, but there's still things that you have in mind to do that now seems the right time to do.
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.
I didn't have the kind of talent or personality that kept me dreaming about Hollywood. They don't hire little colored girls to do this or that. After I got that in my head, I took another direction.
I think I have something unique that I'd like to share.
Gangsters lived in the neighborhood. They weren't apart from it. Their relationships with people were both benevolent and scary.
I think the poets and musicians, they belong to everybody.
Before I latched onto the concept of stereotypes, not once did I reckon with the fact that I would never be a 'Hollywood starlet.'
Black filmmakers - I'm grateful for them.
We are all a tiger with feelings. An elephant who never forgets. We are tiger, panther, monkey - we are all of these things, all of the life rhythms.
God has use for all the old people.
I don't think the arts would have been as meaningful to me if I hadn't grown up in Harlem.
I pray with my whole soul that the divide-and-conquerers among us will not triumph over us. We need each other in this world so desperately.
I didn't realize it until I was grown how necessary it is for good people to be tough.
You're not supposed to go into business with the sole purpose of putting your neighbor out of business. This is not the United States of Corporate America.
My experience for myself as a performer is not one of high expectations.
An Oscar nomination? That would be a very satisfying thing, I'm sure. I would appreciate the thought. It would be like taking your hat off as an actor to all the people who walk through you.
I have always been against the gangster as hero.
There is a place for people 65 and older that no other age group can fit. We have nothing to lose. Some of us have a couple pennies. We can go out now and really be revolutionaries.
We don't realize how much racism has tainted our self-image as human beings.
Is it safe and sane to only have one political and economic system by which everyone in the world can live? Or can we explore and share? God never made one of anything.
I'm an actor who appreciates direction.
