Quotes on Roles

This rule of silence is upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy access even to the word “patriarchy.” Most children do not learn what to call this system of institutionaliz ed gender roles, so rarely do we name it in everyday speech. This silence promotes denial. And how can we organize to challenge and change a system that cannot be named?

The artist's role isn't to tell people how to feel, but reflect.

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

What I have wanted to do is take roles that are unexpected for people who look like me. Roles that the establishment would say, 'Oh, she couldn't possibly be that.'

I really only take roles that I love and that I have some kind of innate compulsion or need to tell that story. Although it's almost like I have no control over it. It's like they choose me.

The letter kills the spirit. The written text is mute in the face of responding challenge. It does not admit of inward growth and correction. Text subverts the absolutely vital role of memory.

Leadership is a series of behaviors rather than a role for heroes.

I'm not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn't have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.

With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.

There are so few roles out there. And even if it is a film that could be led by a black actress, how many times is that film going to get funded? Let's just be real. But it's not just black people. It's Asians, it's Hispanic people if you're not Salma Hayek. It's hard. It's hard to get films funded.

The role of the artist is to not look away.

Women are interested in relationships and how other societies manage those relationships. They may have been constrained in what roles were open to them, but they could question and observe, and they could write it down.

Be a role model not a critic. Don't tell your children, your peers, or your subordinates what to do - show them. And when the lesson is over, keep showing them by demonstrating that your actions are part of your character, not part of their curriculum.

You know, it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things, it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles, telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope, someday, we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.

The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full, but also when people's basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies

Where constraint breaks people, and mediation makes fools of them, the seduction of power is what makes them love their oppression. Because of it, people give up their real riches for a cause that mutilates them; for an appearance that reifies them; for roles that wrest them from authentic life; for a time whose passage defines and confines them.

There's always a sense of newness with acting, because every role, you come to every role fresh.

Having been in some roles that really resonated with women, I became hyper-aware of how women are represented in Hollywood.

When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.

Jordan seeks to play only one role, that of a model state. It is our aim to set an example for our Arab brethren, not one that they need follow but one that will inspire them to seek a higher, happier destiny within their own borders.

My whole career strategy has been to build a base so that I could take the roles I want to play. I'd hate to think that a shorter part might not be available because I was worried about my billing.