Mahershala Ali Quotes

I've tested life and I've learned what works for me.

I got a few marriage proposals in my 20s. I just wasn't ready. I just knew if I committed, I would've wound up doing something wrong, messing it up. I still felt like I had some living to do.

A complete autobiography would indeed be a picture of the outer and inner universe photographed upon one little life's consciousness. For does not the whole world, seen and unseen, go to the making up of every human being?

Really, I was such a late bloomer, I really didn't learn how to be me until I was in my late '40s, which is when I started playing roles that were closer to me.

I'm trying to make myself better. But I don't regret anything that I've gone through, because it makes me who I am.

I think almost everything in life is life-experience, personality-driven.

Don't go through life, grow through life.

I've done a lot of growing up since the age of 16 and I really wanted that to be reflected in my music.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

My life is better with every year of living it.

As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

How does anybody change from the time that they're 18 till they're 25? Everything kind of changes. You see the world much differently, and you get your priorities in order a little bit more.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.

At 21, there's lots more room there, plenty of things to improve on as you get older.

When the student is ready... the lesson appears.

Like everybody, I've had a lot of pain in my life and I'm a work in progress. You must have a true desire to see the world from a different point of view, and that comes with growing up.

I've done thousands of interviews in my life, and it's a format that I quite enjoy, because I think of questions in interviews as an opportunity to sort of gauge my growth in a way. It gives me an idea of how I'm navigating this world that I'm in.

I'm beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

Forty is better than 30. I have a better understanding of who I am, what makes me tick, what's okay and not okay.

Through therapy and a lot of thinking and writing my memoirs, I've been able to use my life as a lesson.

I didn't get on TV until I was 30, which is really fortunate because you are who you are at that point.

We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.

The background - your own history - is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.

The roles that have come into my life have taught me - and in that time period maybe I didn't even know it, but whatever came up or whatever it is that you have to express at that time, has benefitted me in a particular way.