Cicely Tyson

You never know what motivates you.

Ali… we should have gone to see that movie. Malcolm X was another one.

I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there’s nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.

When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don’t want to know anything. If it’s good I don’t want to hear it; if it’s bad I don’t want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused.

In my early years, there were a number of experiences that made me decide I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. There were a number of issues I wanted to address. And I wanted to use my career as a platform.

I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.

We have to support our own films. If we don’t, how can we expect others to support them?

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They’re what make the instrument stretch-what make you go beyond the norm.

I don’t condemn anyone for making their choices. If someone chooses those roles, fine. But not for me. When someone stops me and says, You’re the reason I became an actress, that lets me know I made the right decision.

When I told my mother that I wanted to be an actress, she said, you can’t live here and do that, and so I moved out. I was determined to prove her wrong because she was so sure that I was going to go astray. And that’s the juice that kept me going.