Top 159 Quotes & Sayings by Lupita Nyong'o - Page 2

I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying, We don't have work for black women.'

Personally, I don't ever want to depend on makeup to feel beautiful.

Growing up, I had really bad skin. I had a skin disorder. Yes, I did. And my mother went to great lengths to try to find something to remedy it. I remember she took a trip to Madagascar and came back with all these alternative, medicinal herbs and stuff. They didn't smell so good, but I think they worked some magic.

Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me. He asked me, 'So what is it you want to do?' I very shyly, timidly admitted that I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and he said, 'Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do - only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.'

I definitely love fantasy and would want to be in a fantasy project.

I am very emotional about politics in a way that makes it hard for me to articulate things in a rational fashion.

I learned at Yale, one of the biggest lessons was to learn how special I am and therefore how totally unspecial I am. I was special among everyone else who was special. The fact that we're all so individual and that's what makes us special.

I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya, so it's hustle and bustle, and there's always something going on.

I haven't always been gluten-free.

I grew up in a world where the majority of people were black, so that wasn't the defining quality of anyone. When you're describing someone, you don't start out with 'he's black, he's white.'

The Hollywood Film Awards were really stressful. It was the biggest press line I'd ever seen.

Makeup isn't something I've worn a lot of in my life.

As human beings, what makes us able to empathize with people is a connection that is not necessarily understood mentally.

What fame does is there is an illusion of familiarity that is cast into the world. So it's about negotiating with that illusion because, oftentimes, you encounter people who have encountered you, but you haven't encountered them. It's a little weird to find your footing.

I don't ever want to be president - let's just get that out of the way.

I do my best work when I feel conviction to say something through the character I play. Always I want to have integrity and not compromise that.

My father used to act in high school. He was in a production of 'Othello;' I don't know who he played, but it wasn't Othello. He would talk about it, though, and read Shakespeare to me.

Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.

I was part of a growing community of women who were secretly dealing with harassment by Harvey Weinstein. But I also did not know that there was a world in which anybody would care about my experience with him.

That's such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me. I don't think of what I don't have; I think of what I do and use that to get the next thing.

I'm still trying to get over the fact that my name is being mentioned with people like Brad Pitt.

It's great to have something to dress up for. You know, I spent three years in slacks at drama school, so now I like putting a dress on.

I value not being good at things, because children are not good at things.

I went to an all-boys high school, and they accepted girls in only the two A.P. classes.

What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.

I was born in Mexico because my father was teaching at a school in Mexico City. I was born during the third year he was there. And when I was 16, I returned to Mexico to learn Spanish.

I had moved back to Kenya after undergrad, and I went through this crisis of, 'What is my life going to be about?'

Our business is complicated because intimacy is part and parcel of our profession; as actors, we are paid to do very intimate things in public. That's why someone can have the audacity to invite you to their home or hotel, and you show up.

Being a part of '12 Years a Slave' has been one of the most profound experiences of my life.

I didn't love my hair when I was a child. It was lighter than my skin, which made me not love it so much. I was really kind of envious of girls with thicker, longer, more lush hair.

I always love to learn new things. That's the reason I like being an actor.

When I was younger, I was almost too afraid to admit that I wanted to be an actor.

To this day, I love eating steak tacos before going to the red carpets.

I never understood who all those people are behind the actors! When you see them on the red carpet on TV, you go, 'Why does that person need such a large entourage?' And then you realize that every single person there has a role to play.

Before the advent of the white man, black people were doing all kinds of things with their hair. The rejection of kinks and curls did come with the white man.

I never, in my wildest dreams, could I have thought that the first role I get out of school would lead to an Oscar nomination.

Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet.

There have been rumors and rumors and rumors about my love life. That's the one area that I really like to hold close to my heart.

Everyone said, ‘Brace yourself, Lupita! Keep a granola bar in that clutch of yours!’ I didn’t really understand what they meant, and it was only once it was past that I realized that my body had been holding on by a thread to get through this very intense experience. Nothing can prepare you for awards season. The red carpet feels like a war zone, except you cannot fly or fight; you just have to stand there and take it.

There is no shame in black beauty.

Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It keeps us honest.

What I will say is that what I have learned for myself is that I don’t have to be anybody else; and that myself is good enough; and that when I am being true to that self, then I can avail myself to extraordinary thingsYou have to allow for the impossible to be possible.

Your value is in yourself; the other stuff will come and go.

We don't get to pick the genes we want. There's room in this world for beauty to be diverse.

I feel privileged that people are looking up to me and perhaps a dream will be born because of my presence.

When I was in the second grade, one of my teachers said, "Where are you going to find a husband? How are you going to find someone darker than you?" I was mortified. I remember seeing a commercial where a woman goes for an interview and doesn't get the job. Then she puts a cream on her face to lighten her skin, and she gets the job! This is the message: that dark skin is unacceptable. I definitely wasn't hearing this from my immediate family - my mother never said anything to that effect - but the voices from the television are usually much louder than the voices of your parents.

I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be.

Every time I overcome an obstacle, it feels like success. Sometimes the biggest ones are in our head - the saboteurs that tell us we can't.

You have to allow for the impossible to be possible.

No matter where you're from, your dreams are valid.

To be human is to seek perfection, and find joy in never attaining it.

That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.

I've worked hard to feel beautiful in my natural skin. Personally, I don't ever want to depend on makeup to feel beautiful.

You can't eat beauty, it doesn't sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty inflamed the heart and merchants the soul.

You fail, and then what? Life goes on. It's only when you risk failure that you discover things.

What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion: for yourself and for those around you.

I come from a loving, supportive family, and my mother taught me that there are more valuable ways to achieve beauty than just through your external features. She was focused on compassion and respect, and those are the things that ended up translating to me as beauty.

What I've learned from myself is that I don't have to be anybody else. Myself is good enough.

European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world - the idea that darker skin is not beautiful, that light skin is the key to success and love. Africa is no exception.

I think it's a real gift to be faced with man's potential for extreme cruelty but also man's resilience and the fact that love really does conquer everything. It's the only answer to these kinds of atrocities and it's not a passive thing.