Viola Davis Quotes

I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me.

The only thing Oriental about me, is my face.

Stories about race and identity pique my interest for obvious reasons. That's in my body, my brain, my history, my memories - it's all part of my toolbox as an actor.

It was a big thing for me to read black writers. 'Fences,' by August Wilson. James Baldwin's 'Amen Corner.' 'The Fire Next Time.' 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' of course.

The only thing that said 'Lando Calrissian' was ethnic was his looks.

All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.

I view myself as a multicultural woman who happens to be black.

I would say my flow is Aboriginal. Look at my face, nose, lips, and eyes.

There are a plethora of ways of being black, just like there's many ways to being white.

There's no real test of how Asian you need to be to be able to own your Asianness, and it's always going to be an area of contention.

I am fine with my books being categorized as African-American literature but I hope they are also considered Haitian-American literature and American literature. All of these things are part of who I am and what I write.

Well, Bradbury's a genius. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Illustrated Man as a collection of short stories ranks up there. When you read it you realize how influential it is on so many other stories and people.

I almost never do anything for Black History Month, because I feel it's just another way to separate us.

Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?"

The black man should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man and not the best possible imitation of a white man.

I am particularly conscious of my connection to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance because I, too, am a Black poet, born into, and shaped by, the very community in which those poets of the past produced so much of the work we associate with the Harlem Renaissance. We speak from the same place, both literally and metaphorically.

America is a melting pot for all different groups of people, historically. And it's rare that the story of all of these people will be told in the history books. So I always felt I had to find out my history for myself and research my roots.

Puerto Ricans are many colors - we are Spanish, we're French, we're Thai, Indian, we're almost black, some of us.

The Mexican revolution was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo.

I have written 13 books, full of my ideas about a variety of issues - from black women, to hip-hop culture, to the civil rights struggle. Even when I address such figures as Tupac Shakur and Bill Cosby, my ideas are quite evident.

There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.

Part of the history of black people in the western hemisphere, in some ways, has been fleeing from this notion that they were black. So I can represent an ideal, and with that, you can demonstrate that there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to run from, and that, in fact, a good deal of beauty that resides there.

Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it…Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.

We black women are the single group in the West intact. And anybody can see we're pretty shaky. We are, however (all praises), the only group that derives its identity from itself.

What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary or other kinds of fiction do. The name of the game in F/SF/HF is creating fictional worlds and then telling particular stories set in those worlds. If you're doing it right, then the reader, coming to the end of the story, will say, "Hey, wait a minute, there are so many other stories that could be told in this universe!" And that's how we get the sprawling, coherent fictional universes that fandom is all about.