Afeni Shakur Quotes

When I was growing up, there was still that narrative of 'you finish school, you go and get married, you become somebody's wife and you get kids and tend to them.' I think it is really important to reach for something.

I am not a career woman, and I would never have become one in normal life, because I am not ambitious enough for that.

When I was 21 I stopped and got married. I tried for a while to be the perfect wife, society this, society that but it wasn't working, so after about a year I went back to work.

To not pursue the thing one wants would be a waste of one's life.

Before we got married, I had tremendous ambition. Once we got married and I started having children, then I just thought that that was my real life. Steve was definitely more ambitious than I.

I love acting. But I love being a mother. To be a full mother and a full person, you have to do what you love, and that's acting. But I like the best of both worlds.

It took the producers a while to realize I wanted a full-bodied life. I wanted to get out before I felt I'd sacrificed so much to get somewhere that I couldn't afford to leave.

And also I didn't want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn't want to see my life in that way.

I was never meant to sit at home.

I was never meant to sit at home.

… not to be a housewife

I don't think I'll ever be a housewife.

I looked at my mom and her life, and I thought, 'I don't want that.' I don't think my mom wanted it, either. I think my mom did want to be out there and have a career. She loved working. As soon as we were old enough to feed ourselves, she was out.

I am too ambitious to become a house husband.

I've been part of really big things that are amazing, but I haven't taken on that responsibility yet. So I don't want to sell myself short by having a kid and then regret not doing what I set out to do.

I don't just want to catch some guy and have a bunch of kids. I want to make something of myself.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become.

There's so many things I want to do. I want to work with great filmmakers, great actors, great scripts. And there's no reason for me to do anything short of that, because I'm 24, I don't have a family, I don't need to make tons of money, and I'm not dying to get famous.

I want more job. I want to die entertaining.

I had a dozen years to act before starting a family, then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.

I really want to play interesting roles, but you want to work, so it's a balancing game.

In the beginning, I aspired just to make a comfortable living in acting. I still feel the same - it's just that my standards have gone up, so my comfort level is higher as well.

I want to be challenged, I want to work, and I want to feel that I am not being held back, that there is something in front of me, something more inspiring than... just eating breakfast, you know?

My biggest ambition is never to be bored. I'm not aggressive enough to strongly run after being an actress.

My ambition comes from my passion: finding what I love and then expanding on that.