WHOOPI GOLDBERG

I used my imagination to make the grass whatever color I wanted it to be.

I think the idea that you know who your inner self is on a daily basis, because... you know. What's good for you 25 years ago may not be good for you now. So, to keep in touch with that, I think that's the first ingredient for success. Because if you're a successful human being, everything else is gravy, I think.

My family is Jewish, Buddhist, Baptist and Catholic. I don't believe in man-made religions.

I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

There are roles I am never considered for. Meryl Streep roles, let's say. Why not? I really wanted to do 'Ironweed,' for example, because the depression era in this country was one of the best for multiracial people, because everybody was poor. Everybody lived in the tents, and under buildings, and under gratings, together.

I'm a big old egotistical baby and that's okay. I can accept it.

When I started, I knew I didn't fit any visual that anyone was going to lie down and take their clothes off about. Work doesn't come to me; I go out and look for it.

I want Carl Sagan to explain the sky to me.

Just call me black, if you want to call me anything.

That's the thing about Mother Nature, she really doesn't care what economic bracket you're in.

It bums me out tremendously what the church has become, and if it's got me bummed, imagine what Jesus Christ must be feeling.

When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire.

Things happen to you out of luck, and if you get to stick around it's because you're talented.

We're born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.

If I was doing a talk show, I would do the kind of show that comes on just once a month, with amazing guests.

Born ham, that's basically me.

I don't have to be bam, bam, bam, funny when I'm working. I can tell stories, and there's some funny in them.

Everything for me is visual. That's just how my head works.

Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.

The art of acting is to be other than what you are.

I am the American Dream. I am the epitome of what the American Dream basically said. It said you could come from anywhere and be anything you want in this country. That's exactly what I've done.

Sitting at the table during Color Purple and looking up and suddenly realizing I was acting in front of Steven Spielberg, was pretty cool. It was pretty good.

Normal is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't look like Halle Berry. But chances are she's going to end up looking like me.