Aja Naomi King

Studying acting has been personally enriching because it has taught me to take the time to imagine what someone else's life experience might be like. To look deeply at how our pasts and the circumstances of our early childhoods mold us as people.

To meet someone who wants to fight to just tell the truth about what's happening in government... this is a real life superhero right here.

The problem of sexism is getting better, but I don't know if it's getting better fast enough. We see more roles for women that don't entirely revolve around the way in which they function in a man's life, but typically those women are almost always white, and even then, there are only a few of them.

I want to write. I want to direct. I want to produce - I want to inhabit what I think it means to fully be an artist.

I have a lovely light blue Kate Spade wallet. It has pockets for many credit cards, business cards, health insurance cards, and a Burke Williams card for when I want to go to the spa!

I always think - when I get mad, and people say, 'Don't be the angry black woman' - it's like, well, why not? There's so much to be angry about.

A man should be well groomed. If you're going to have facial hair, it should be a choice, not an accident.

If all we remember are good things, then happiness is our baseline, and there's no longer happiness. We need other feelings in order to appreciate others.

I'm a little bit of a control freak, so it's been nice to learn to let go and just trust others.

The advice that I was always given when asking for advice about acting was that if I could imagine myself doing anything else, anything else at all, then go do that.

I've been performing since I was a child; my mother would have to pull me aside and tell me that I wasn't onstage. I was a cheerleader, president of choir, and in the school play.

I was getting in my own way. I would quit jobs and step out on hope and faith, and pray to God that I would book something that would allow me to just continue to act.