We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

---

But the biggest beauty advice I've given my daughter is every morning I say, "Genesis, what are the two best parts of you?" And she says "my brain and my heart." And I say, "You've gotta remember that, Genesis. You've gotta remember that you're not what you look like," you know? I think that's the best beauty advice I could give her.

---

When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself.

---

There's not one woman in America who does not care about her hair, but we give it way too much value. We deprive ourselves of things, we use it to destroy each other, we'll look at a child and judge a mother and her sense of motherhood by the way the child's hair looks. I am not going to traumatize my child about her hair. I want her to love her hair.

---

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.

---

Relationships change us and make us grow.

---

As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

---

Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.

---

Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person's capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else.

---

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

---