Yara Shahidi Quotes

The decision-making process was very difficult: is this how I want my career to start, with playing Jodie Dallas on this show?

I was really conflicted. I had always planned to help the world. Instead, I was going to become an actress? That seemed like such a selfish thing to do.

I didn't know whether to join the army or go to art college.

Part of me wants nothing to do with any Hollywood. But another part of me wants to go there. I feel like I could be successful at it.

The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest.

Until the age of thirteen, I tortured the waiting worlds of book illustration and professional football by shilly-shallying over which of them was going to get the benefit of my inestimable talents.

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

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don't love it; I just like it.

What I'm having is this conflict in my life right now, that in New York, I see my directing friends and I see acting friends and they've all got this level of passion about either or both of those directions that I've never really found myself having.

Baking is my pastime. I just love creating things. But it's not what I want to do for a living. Acting is what I want to do.

I've suffered from an identity crisis my entire life. It's why I went into acting.

I tell people: 'Do what you love, but it can also be hard to know what you love early on. But when you think about it and you describe the options, which one gets you a little more excited?'

I'm either going to have the career I want doing films, or I'll do something else - I'll be gone.

Then a year would go by and I'd realize I love the acting too much and it is my identity and I don't know how to be anything but an actress. It's who and what I am, so I always come back.

I love acting - I love doing it. It's a lot of fun, but for the longest time, I wanted to become a firefighter. I still do want to become a firefighter.

I'm still trying to decide. It's a really difficult one because I really enjoy my time in the Air Force. And I'd love to continue it. But the pressures of my other life are building. And fighting them off or balancing the two of them has proven quite difficult.

For me, acting is something I am passionate about. I am someone who wants to be known for who I am. If I wanted to just make money, I would've chosen some other profession.

I think everyone goes through it in university, figuring out whether or not they're doing the right course. I guess I'm the same, but in music.

I've grown up in a small town, and I played a lot of sports, so it was always between music and sports. People would ask me, 'What would you choose?' And I was always like, 'I don't know.'

I was having a dilemma whether I wanted to return to acting at all because I was coming from this sort of agency-less childhood career, and I'd never made the choice to go into acting.

Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go.

I watched the Oscars, but there wasn't a side of me that was like "Oh, one day..." It was mostly "This is what I want to do, and how do I do it?" As soon as I decided that I was going to be an actor, for about five years after that, I just decided to not do much acting. It was like "Okay, this is what you're going to be later on."

I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.

I balance things better and don't kill myself so much, but conflict makes me a more interesting actress to watch. The places I go to pull emotions from, I think if you have a perfect, happy life, you just don't have those places. And I want those places. I'm proud of those places.

I love acting, but I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.