The more I'm pushed in a position of leadership and I know I have to be the mouthpiece for so many other people who can't speak for themselves, the more confidence I'm gaining.
Viola DavisRead
I don't care if someone is new to acting or experienced in acting: you always learn something from them. It's just like people in life - whether they're young or middle-aged or old, you always learn something from someone.
Interpretation
We can always learn something from others, regardless of their experience or age.
Viola Davis emphasizes the value of learning from individuals of varying backgrounds and experiences, whether they are newcomers or seasoned professionals. This perspective suggests that every interaction offers the potential for growth and insight, encouraging an open-minded approach to relationships and shared experiences in both acting and life more broadly.
In practice
In a motivational speech addressing young actors, you could quote this to inspire them to value every experience.
The more I'm pushed in a position of leadership and I know I have to be the mouthpiece for so many other people who can't speak for themselves, the more confidence I'm gaining.
What excites me is just taking some time to breathe in life. The mundane is very exciting.
I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.
And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.
There's no prerequisites to worthiness. You're born worthy, and I think that's a message a lot of women need to hear.
August Wilson is the one writer that writes about men like my father, who had a fifth grade education, who was a janitor at McDonald's.
Owing to some peculiarity in my nervous system, I have perception of some things, which no one else has; or at least very few, if any... I can throw rays from every quarter of the universe into one vast focus.
I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you're young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something.
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation. (pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")
You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.
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