Quotes on Skin

The football field was a place where I could express myself and just be me. Play the game as well as you can and that's what you're judged on. Not the colour of your skin, or your beliefs, or the conversation you have around racism.

I didn't want to create a makeup line for one ethnic group; it had to be multi-ethnic. To me, beauty is beauty. It doesn't matter to me what colour the skin is.

It's never a question of skin pigmentation. It's never a question of just culture or sexual orientation or civilization. It's what kind of human being you're going to choose to be from your mama's womb to the tomb and what kind of legacy will you leave.

The people who are most attractive to me are those who feel most comfortable in their skin - there's a sense of self-acceptance.

I look under the skin of countries' economies, and I help them make better decisions and be stronger, to prosper and create employment.

When I was young, I was picked on for something that today I feel is amazing. One thing about me connects millions of people around the world. And it's my skin condition - vitiligo.

Being a kid with black skin in South Central Los Angeles, in a part of the world where opportunity didn't necessarily knock every day, is what gave me this sensibility and drove me to explore my fascination with art.

Believers are right when they say that to understand a religion properly you need to get under its skin. But to understand it fully, you cannot stay there: you have to take a more objective view, too.

I'm just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.

The lighter the skin, the more acceptable you are. The darker the skin, the more marginalised you become. I want to demonstrate that you can produce beauty in the context of a figure that has that kind of velvety blackness. It can be done.

I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of skin and my kind of hair, was never considered to be beautiful.

You have to have a thick skin, yes. If you're going to do something as foolhardy as standup, you've got to be able to take it on the chin if someone has a go at you.

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.

The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?

It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles.

As an actor, you can't just imitate someone. You have to get under her skin.

If you truly want to find a meaningful relationship, you've got to find yourself first and learn to be confident in your own skin. Don't sacrifice anything about who you are to be with someone. That's setting yourself up for failure.

If we're afraid to stand in our own skin with those we work with, then how do we lead those who have no voice at all?

My parents told me from the time I can remember that, 'Yeah, you're adopted. But this is your family.' I can remember my mom, she tells me this story: when I was little, I was looking at her, and I was like, 'Why isn't my skin the same color as yours?' She was like, 'Oh, you're adopted, but I wish I had pretty brown skin like you.'

My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women.

My parents never let the color of our skin be an excuse for why we did not succeed.