Lisa Bonet

I felt devalued and disrespected. The energy behind it felt disingenuous and motivated by corporate profit.

It’s from our sufferings that we form our consciousness.

Success made me self-sufficient, but it also took away my anonymity. I’m just this quiet nobody, and all of a sudden people are nervous around me. That was kind of weird.

I work with youth offenders in LA, I’ve heard them speak and see how music manipulates them.

An instructor once told me that when there’s resistence in your body, it’s only because of the resistence in your mind. It’s about getting inside the pose. Being the breath.

It’s okay to be a freak.

That industry expects you to prove yourself over and over again. Do I stay doing this, or do I raise my daughter and live surrounded by people who love me? Wasn’t even really a choice.

Once a week we go to juvenile hall and talk to boys there. Just go and spend a day in the juvenile courts.

I took solace in my relationship with God who, along with my dog, was my best friend growing up.

Prisons are like the concentration camps of our time. So many go in and never come out, and primarily they’re black and Latino.

We’re getting ready to take over the world. My group of girlfriends – we’re renegades.

My desire to participate in the business is not to make more crap.

What saddens me is the corruption of youth and beauty, and the loss of soul, which is only replaced by money.

I’m part of an important movement that needs to happen.

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We’ve tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

I have a desire to create more film, more beauty, more art, more love, but I don’t feel desperate. It’s not about creating or building a career.

The Cosby years were a major part of my life, but it is the past; I don’t really concentrate on it.

Everyone has their story. Everyone has issues. You have to face your fears.

My mother, brave woman, lost her whole family when she decided to marry a black man in the ’60s. When the marriage fell apart, she had to come back to her family.

We use a Native American tradition of the talking stick. You sit and pass it around and whoever has the stick has to talk. Some people just hold it. Others really share.

I was literally the black sheep of the family, and there were definitely moments of discomfort while my grandmother was working through her racism.

Both of my parents would say they were atheists, so where I inherited my connection to God I don’t know. But it’s natural. No Bible, no Torah, just the love religion.

My life is art. Its how I express God.

When I was 16 I was fortunate enough to get Cosby and move to New York and shift my whole life. that had been my dream all along, and it came true.

Let those who know know, and let me keep what little privacy I can.

I spent a lot of time feeling alienated and rejected.

I’m writing a film. With our access to these powerful media, we’re going to take over, because it’s really disgusting what is put out there now to be consumed.

Having Zoe saved my life. It was my wake-up call. There were so many things I didn’t want to pass on to her.