Top 43 Quotes & Sayings by Jay Ellis

A lot of what you're seeing these characters go through is something that either is a story one of the actors told in the writers' room or one of the writers themselves told in the writers' room.

It's like one of the best things that can ever happen to you as an actor: to have your story reach people, even if they don't look like you and even though they may not be able to identify with a black male; they can still identify with what's happening to you.

I think our life is a journey, and we make mistakes, and it's how we learn from those mistakes and rebound from those mistakes that sets us on the path that we're meant to be on.

Everyone has a role, no matter where you are on the globe.

I like to be fulfilled in telling stories and in creating, but I'm just a curious person.

I auditioned for Lamorne Morris' part, Winston, on 'New Girl.' In the scene, the character was eating a mayonnaise sandwich. I thought, 'Nobody else is going to go into the audition eating, and this is how I'm gonna set myself apart.'

I read the script first to get the perspective on the whole story, the writing, and how the character I'm auditioning for is talked about by other people or relates to other people; from there, I go into the sides.

I had a journalist slap me, and it wasn't anyone that I had ever met before. I was at the airport.

I'm insanely curious about life and everyone's story and where they come from and how they got to be who they are.

Where I went to high school at was a predominantly white town, and I definitely got pulled over a number of times for driving in the wrong car on the wrong side of town. As you get older, you start to realize that at any moment, there could be a trigger, and that could be you in that situation.

Agents run a business, and their business is their talent; some are more general and broad and can rep a little bit of everything; some are more niche. You have to be specific with who you approach and how.

I love to study people and pick apart what makes a person or character who they are. I never want to get complacent in that.

My dad was in the service, so I went to 12 schools in 13 years.

There are tons of talented people out there, and we just don't get a chance to get into this system. I want to be a part of that. I want to help these young, diverse, unique voices tell stories.

I want to create this pool of talent to draw from, and I hope that people get inspired to make more web series and bring them to me to help develop.

When you love somebody, you gotta be honest with them even if it'll hurt them.

Young women who come to Rise every weekend range from ages 15-19 years if they're in school and 19-24 years if they're out of school. These empowered young women talk about protecting themselves, their friends and communities and how they can educate people to help break the stigma surrounding AIDS.

I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, which is both settling and terrifying. The roller coaster is going, and there is no jumping off at this point unless I just go nuclear. It's a really interesting part of the whole journey.

Storytelling is always evolving, but if you allow people with new voices and perspectives to come in, you open audiences up to different walks of life.

I run the material, always with two people, sometimes three. We all see things so differently, so to get a couple of people's perspectives on what I'm doing and the material itself is insanely helpful for honing in on what to take into the audition room.

After the success of 'Empire' and 'How to Get Away with Murder' and 'Scandal' and 'Power' and 'Black-ish', which all had characters that were genuine, authentic, and had the language of real people, I found myself coming into pilot season and every network just wanted to have their version of one of those shows.

Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus - I put Issa Rae in that category of comic genius.

Dating, to people, can mean completely different things.

I think we still live in this era of hyper-masculinity.

I'm not a believer in 'what you don't know won't hurt you,' unless it's innocent.

I love the 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.' I love everybody. I loved every single person in the Cosby house, I loved every single person who went to Hillman.

I worked for a smoothie company, and that was rough. I also sold women's shoes for a very long time. That was super rough.

Knowing your HIV status is such an easy thing to do, but again, we've created this stigma around even going to get tested.

HIV is not a death sentence. It doesn't mean life's over. It means that life's going to be different, but you still get to have those moments that people who don't have HIV experience.

As a young, Black man in America, I look out and (realize) that our community is the most affected by HIV.

Ghana is one of the countries in Western Africa that still has quite a few of their slave castles still standing.

At the end of the day, we're people and we should fight for each other and we should make sure the well-being of each one of us is taken care of.

If you have HIV, I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of. Get treatment and don't think that you're out of options or resources because you're not.

When you go out and audition, you're going to hear a lot of 'No's.' As weird as it may sound, you almost have to love hearing 'no' because you're going to hear it way more than you hear 'yes'.

You have to believe in yourself and you have to take risks. You know how people say 30 is new 20 and 40 is new 30? Well I think essentially what that's telling us is there are so many opportunities out there, you don't have to rush into something.

You can try your passion for a while and see if it works and if it doesn't, at least you tried. I think that's why I quit my job and went back to acting. I said this is what I'm going to dedicate my life to doing because I didn't want to look up and say, "Man I wish I would have been an actor. I wish I would have tried."

Every artist is a walking business. Your marketing tools are your headshots and your reel. That's what people see that's what your out there pushing trying to get a rep and that isn't easy.

We think that if we get tested, that means you have to have HIV. Or we think that just by knowing someone with HIV, we're going to get HIV or because he's gay or she's a lesbian or whatever. This false information has been put out there and it's created this stigma that stops us from going to find out if we're infected. The truth is it doesn't matter who you are, if you're having sex, you need to be getting tested, plain and simple.

I quit my job and for almost two years I didn't tell anyone, not even my family or friends. And for those two years I enrolled in acting classes. I acted in some capacity every single day.

We [African-Americans] are nearly half of all of the new cases of HIV every year, but we only represent 13 percent of the [U.S.] population. So, this is something that's literally bombarding our community, non-stop. We're such a small part of the nation [and] those numbers are alarming. We're putting ourselves in danger, we don't talk about getting tested and we don't talk about knowing [your status].

I try to be as realistic as possible.

Once I got my business degree I realized I didn't want to do business anymore. My passion started to kick in and say, "Are you really sure this is what you want to do with the rest of your life? Are you 100% positive?"

As long as you're consistently working on your craft, your heart is in the right place, and you pair that with being smart on how you present yourself to people, opportunities will appear.