All I really want to do is just keep acting, and some of it will stink, and some of it will be really good, and maybe when I'm 85 and presenting an Oscar like Bette Davis did, I can look back and say, 'It was okay, I did all right.'

When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire.

I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. 'Ghost' was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I'm black? Oh, am I black?

It's being willing to walk away that gives you strength and power - if you're willing to accept the consequences of doing what you want to do.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

My comedy is different than a lot of people's.

Our comedy was light-hearted amusement that seemingly tripped naturally off the tongue. That's why I don't think it will date.

I wanted 'The South Bank Show' to reflect my own life and that of the team around me; to stretch the accepted boundaries and challenge the accepted hierarchies of the arts; to include pop music as well as classical music, television drama as well as theatre drama, and high-definition performers in comedy.