Explore Quotes by Octavia Spencer

We all have hourglass figures; your sand just settles in different places.

I am an advocate of education. It is the panacea for all that ails us in our society.

You have to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow. And as an actor, you don't become Meryl Streep by doing the same type of comedy. You get there by being challenged. And unfortunately, there's a lack of roles for women of color, so you actually have to be the engineer creating some of those roles.

To be silent is to be passive.

The fact that women are very young in obtaining their civil rights and African-Americans are young in obtaining their civil rights, I think it's about time that we extend that to all Americans, whether straight, gay, purple, green, black, brown.

I think my role, I want to have a presence both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. So I can't say on one particular thing, so I'll just name them all. I'll be the jack of all trades and hopefully decent at one of them.

I prefer doing interviews where people don't have to interpret what you say. I'm going to be real honest.

I like a person who knows how to say something dark at a very dark moment. The darker the moment and the darker the comic, the better. Something that is so wrong on all levels.

I think it's actually a misperception that I am a comedic actress. I do more drama than comedy but very little of it has been seen. When you are in big funny movies and they do well and your little part in it kind of explodes people perceive you as a comedian.

I think if I weren't so squeamish, I would have been some sort of forensic analyst. And I can't do anything with a microscope, because then I start thinking about the world of germs around us.

Meeting Oprah Winfrey, I cried like a baby. Meeting Steven Spielberg, I cried like a baby. Meeting Denzel Washington, I gushed like a crazy woman. If I don't get excited or star struck by someone I've been dying to meet, it's time to retire.

I have tried every diet to lose weight. When you restrict yourself, you're setting yourself up for failure.

I've seen too many sunrises, as far as the walk of shame, staying out too late doing very bad things.

'Grey's Anatomy' is a very culturally diverse show.

I was a production assistant. I saw what people who are full of themselves are like - another reason not to lose your humility! I have a mouth on me so I wasn't the best P.A.

You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.

Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.

I don't have one role that I want to play. I guess... I want to be a producer. I want to be an activist. I want to be proactive in bringing about work for men, women, boys, girls, everybody who is good at what they do and deserve a shot at it.

The hardest thing about writing, for me, is facing the blank page.

I choose projects that resonate with me on some personal level and projects that I'm afraid to do. If I'm afraid to do them, then I usually say yes, because it means that I'm not ready to go there and deal with certain aspects of the script. And that means that I need to do it, because the things that scare you only make you better and stronger.

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny, and hope that whatever your art is that you're putting out there, if it's received, great, I respect you for receiving it. If it's not received, great, I respect you for not.