Tell me what you want, and then I'll put in what I want... after I'm done with my codependent providing for you, I'll get a little for me too.
Put on a camera and put on some whatever, and you're an actor. Put me in a cage, I'm a fighter. Put me somewhere else - I'm in an ocean, I'm a surfer. I don't know what I am, I just do it all. And I want to be good at everything.
Tell me I'm clever, Tell me I'm kind, Tell me I'm talented, Tell me I'm cute, Tell me I'm sensitive, Graceful and wise, Tell me I'm perfect - But tell me the truth.
Maybe . . . because for the first time . . . there was a chance I could keep him,” I say. “So now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?” “Put you somewhere you can't get hurt.” And when he kisses me, people in the room actually sigh.
I can feel Peeta press his forehead into my temple and he asks, 'So now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?' I turn into him. 'Put you somewhere you can't get hurt.
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
You put me in a race where there's a lot on the line, especially when people tell me 'you can't win', or 'you're too small', you tell me those things and I'll find a way to prove you wrong.
My mom, how she raised me, my brothers, my cousins, when I was a kid with one bedroom for 12 people... You think about all that, and God blessed me to get somewhere and do something I love and do something I've done since I was a kid. And blessed me with the talent to do it.
Don't tell me what to do, don't tell me what to say. And please, when I go out with you, don't put me on display.
Take me somewhere I can grow
Give me something let me go
Tell me something I don't know
I have to put a business model together because certain businesses are approaching me as a legend, as if I'm on my way out. Same goes for the way I get presented on the VH1 Hip Hop Honors and BET. I get lifetime achievement awards because of who I am and what I've done, but they want to put me in a place, as if I'm on my way out.
Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.
My parents keep telling me to be thick-skinned in the industry. They tell me how people will put you up on a high platform and then bring you down. They also tell me to not believe in the image created by the hype.
You gotta make your own way. You gotta find a way. You gotta get it done. It's hard. It's tough. That's what I tell my students every day in class. I've been very fortunate. Some people might call me a hardhead, but I'm not going to let other people dictate to me who I should be or the stories I should tell. That doesn't register with me.
Directors tell me what to do, and I kind of just put my own twist to it, just to get inside my personality that everybody doesn't really get to see - my off-the-court interests and the way I act. It's just me.
If a director can't figure out what they might get from me or whether he or she wants to work with me based on what I've done, then I can't tell them anything more than what they don't know already.