Top 278 Quotes & Sayings by Viola Davis - Page 3

Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.

They say, 'To serve is to love,' and I think to serve is to heal, too.

Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.

When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.

At the end of the day, nobody can tell you how to tackle failure or how to handle change. The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes.

When your passion and drive are bigger than your fears, you just dive.

It would be great to bust through and make history. But what's more important is the opportunity to continue to get roles that are complicated and wonderful, to be a part of the narrative and to get to do what our counterparts are able to do. It doesn't just stop at holding an award.

There's not one woman in America who does not care about her hair, but we give it way too much value. We deprive ourselves of things, we use it to destroy each other, we'll look at a child and judge a mother and her sense of motherhood by the way the child's hair looks. I am not going to traumatize my child about her hair. I want her to love her hair.

Knowing the only way out is education, even if you don't have parents that are extraordinarily wealthy. I understand that I have to be an active participant in [my daughter's] education in order for her to thrive in the world.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we're complicated.

And "classically not beautiful" is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you.

I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, "Do you know how fabulous you are?"

I would love to star in a remake of Thelma and Louise. Yep, that's the one I'd be interested in redoing.

People are just not impressed by me at home.

Even when I get the fried-chicken special of the day, I have to dig into it like it's filet mignon.

I would love to be remembered as a person who used her life to inspire others in any way, shape or form.

I already optioned a book called The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. I also like The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. And I love all of Octavia Butler's books. She's created some very complicated black heroines with a variety of belief systems. There are many great books out there, but those are a few of the ones that stand out.

It's not anything that is just perpetuated by White America or just perpetuated by Black America. It's just a cultural understanding that you're just not a part of the equation when it comes to sexuality and I think that people mistake your lack of opportunity with the level of your talent.

I'm very committed to its educational institutions, including my alma mater Central Falls High School's drama program, because I know that's what got me my start. I do everything I can to keep it alive since it made me feel like I had something to give to the world. I also support the Segue Institute for Learning, a charter school in Central Falls run by a friend of mine that my niece attends. I'm committed to that because of its proven results. They have the highest math scores of any charter school in Rhode Island.

I’m a black woman who is from Central Falls, Rhode Island. I’m dark skinned. I’m quirky. I’m shy. I’m strong. I’m guarded. I’m weak at times. I’m sensual. I’m not overtly sexual. I am so many things in so many ways and I will never see myself on screen. And the reason I will never see myself up on screen is because that does not translate with being black.

At the end of the day, nobody can tell you how to tackle failure or how to handle change. The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you.

When you're working as an actor, you don't think that when you get out of school, it's going to be so hard to get a job. Just to get a job. Any job. Whatsoever. You don't think that people are going to see you in a certain way. Uta Hagen said this, "In my life, I see myself as just this, you know, kind of flamboyant, kind of sexy middle-aged woman. And then I see myself onscreen, and I go 'Oh my God.'" And it's the same thing with me. I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't!

I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me.

Anything can be achieved with a good, healthy dose of courage.

You can't be hesitant about who you are.

They say the two most important days in a person's life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.

I guess they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention" because you have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it.

You have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it. When you're really passionate, you're going to grab hold of every rope you see, and wrap them around your arms and legs to claw your way out. And that's the way I've felt in my life.

Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.

Each role has its own different challenges.

Relationships change us and make us grow.

Ordinary people who are just kind of just going about their lives are transformed into heroes because they have the courage to put their voices out there. And I think that's a powerful message in this time of political strife.

Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.

Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

I think that you always want to gravitate towards people who absolutely are great at what they do and go for authenticity.

I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.

I felt that there could be some anger. There could be some frustration that he has the tendency to take over the room, but I wanted all of those things to show in the grays of her hair and the fact that her hips are much wider than they probably were when she met him. I wanted it to show in the fact that her hair is not done up all the time. I wanted it to be a part of that every day that wasn't in your face. Because then for me, that's overacting. To me, that's not "being." I wanted Rose [in "Fences"] to be many things.

I want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent

Acting, it's the disappearance of self, disappearance of your own needs and your own wants and the kind of embracing of the character that makes it work.

If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don't see it.

Sometimes people come in as a director, and they just want the result, and they barely want that to tell you the truth. Sometimes directors barely talk to the actors; they are so focused on the cinematic elements of the movie, getting the shot and getting the lighting right or getting the CGI effects right and all of that, and they just trust that you are just going to do what you do.

I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.

I am not a writer, but I feel that when our production company is successful, we'll be able to give some young writers with fresh voices an opportunity to put their work out there.

Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself.

I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.

I think sometimes you have to see a physical manifestation of your dream. Otherwise you have to hope, pray and try to conjure something in your mind to feel like it's possible.

We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers.

I've always just simply seen myself as an actor. And I believe that it serves me well to just think in terms of my craft. If hypothetically, I saw myself only as a sex symbol, or as some other limited stereotype, I think I would feel like a complete failure.

As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

It feels really good to embrace exactly who I am and be my sexy, to be my sexualized, to be my woman.

It's time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.

Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one's balance. I think that it's very damaging.

I was like, 'What is this?' Until I found out it was stress related. That's how I internalized it. I don't do that anymore. My favorite saying in the world is, 'The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.' I am telling you, I have spent so much of my life not feeling comfortable in my skin. I am just so not there anymore.

I needed to make my wig ogg because I no longer wanted to apologize for who I am

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.

But the biggest beauty advice I've given my daughter is every morning I say, "Genesis, what are the two best parts of you?" And she says "my brain and my heart." And I say, "You've gotta remember that, Genesis. You've gotta remember that you're not what you look like," you know? I think that's the best beauty advice I could give her.

Eating bread in Hollywood is a no-no!