Denzel Washington Quotes

In 2009, Scott Rudin sent me August's [Wilson] original screenplay [Fences] and asked me what I wanted to do with it. He wanted to know if I wanted to act in it, direct it or produce it. I said, "Well, let me read it first."

[Fences] is just a great play to bring to the screen.

I think that's why August [Wilson] named her Rose [in "Fences"]; I really do. She's a rose in her sweetness and her kindness and in everything else, even her anger towards the end.

I'm one of the first Americans who wasn't a torturer or an interrogator.

Blacks have a special history, since they were enslaved and were here as early as the first Americans. I hate to sound like a liberal but these are facts. That makes blacks a special group.

Washington's is the mightiest name of earth - long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

The Electoral College has been with us since the first days of America.

I would love to be fooled. The innocence of child for the first time, seeing something and being in wonder is something that I long for because I'm tainted.

How we love others is affected by how we love ourselves, and for the first time in a long time, I was whole.

Particularly with the plays I choose, they're good parts, and they're parts that have been around long before a bad actor played them, and will be around long after I play them. Part of what I enjoy about the theatre and acting is that sense of history.

We shall not long have love to man if we do not first and chiefly cultivate love to God.

Russia's Vladimir Putin appeared in public for the first time after a mysterious 10-day absence. Putin said it took him that long to recover from the finale of 'The Bachelor.'

It just happened that we did [Fences] seven years ago on Broadway. Scott Rudin brought me August Wilson's original screenplay for it, and I realized I hadn't read the play. So I read it. Then I realized that Troy (my character) was 53 - and I was 55 at the time. I realized I better hurry up! I might be too old!

In my collection, to me at least, the theatre of the past lives again and those long-dead playwrights and actors have in me an enthralled audience of one, and I applaud them across the centuries.

The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

The first piano was built long after they didn't have any at all.

Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

They both (Thalia and Hera) glared at her, and for three long seconds, Piper wasn’t sure which one of them was going to kill her first.

I personally feel like black people in America have contributed so much for so long, and haven't always gotten credit for it.

Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.

The history of theatre is the history of first nights.

I'm like really bad at like remembering all these things, but basically we finished...we wrapped in August and we locked in February. It was like we did our first friends and family screening I would say 8-weeks after we locked...after we wrapped or 8-weeks after we wrapped.

Shifting problems is the first rule for a long and pleasant life.

If you're not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.