Viola Davis quotes

The only picture I have of my childhood is the picture of me in kindergarten. I have this expression on my face - it's not a smile, it's not a frown. I swear to you, that's the girl who wakes up in the morning and who looks around her house and her life saying, 'I cannot believe how God has blessed me.'

I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.

People who are alone all the time never grow. Those hermits just stay the same. It's only through relationships. Relationships change us and make us grow.

As an actor, every opportunity, every role, everything that I do is an opportunity to have someone have a human experience with my work. I don't just want it to be about a cute wardrobe and a high paycheck.

He is a regular guy who absolutely is not attracted to his own celebrity. He's a jokester, a little rough around the edges, with great heart and compassion; he loves his family. I feel very comfortable with him. I don't see 'Denzel Washington Star'; I just see Denzel.

When you're poor, you are invisible. Every poor person will tell you nobody sees you. So being famous was me just wanting to be seen.

If it were just a dream to be famous, then I probably would have died a really quick death, because there is nothing about me that equals fame. I'm not a standup comedian. I don't sing.

I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.

We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

Acting is not rocket science, but it is an art form. What you are doing is illuminating humanity. Or not.

The predator wants your silence. It feeds their power, entitlement, and they want it to feed your shame.

August Wilson is the one writer that writes about men like my father, who had a fifth grade education, who was a janitor at McDonald's.

There's no prerequisites to worthiness. You're born worthy, and I think that's a message a lot of women need to hear.

The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.

Your ability to adapt to failure, and navigate your way out of it, absolutely 100 percent makes you who you are.

I always talk to all the crew. I always make it pleasant. I always nurture a relationship that makes people feel like they're important, like they're a part of the collaboration. I feel that way about the young actors on set. I don't talk to them like I'm the mentor; I talk to them like they're my peers. And I learned that from Meryl Streep.