Quotes on TV

What they say about TV shows is true. You're really a family. You laugh, you fight, you get close, you know? Movies are shorter. They're over quicker. You don't form the same bonds.

In many regions, war and terror prevail. States disintegrate. For many years, we have read about this. We have heard about it. We have seen it on TV. But we had not yet sufficiently understood that what happens in Aleppo and Mosul can affect Essen or Stuttgart. We have to face that now.

Being famous has changed a lot, because now there's so many outlets, between magazines, TV shows, and the Internet, for people to stalk and follow you. We created the monster.

You don't make a movie by yourself; you certainly don't make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking.

Everybody kept saying I wasn't going to get any fights. And they wouldn't put me on TV and they don't respect women's boxing. But I also turned professional with two Olympic gold medals and that's something that no other American boxer has ever done. With that, I've been getting a lot of respect.

I'm 9, 10, and I'm watching the Apollo astronauts go to the moon. We're sitting on the floor of a school, and they have this... huge TV, and I'm looking at that, and I'm thinking 'Me, I would like to do that.' But it didn't dawn on me then that they were American; I was Canadian. They were men; I was a girl. They were test pilots, military folks.

In the 1970s in black and Asian households up and down the country, there's a familiar story that when we saw a non-white person on TV we would call the rest of the family to the sitting room to have a look. The story that is less well known is what it was like to be that one black person on TV.

If you want to be an actor, you must have total, ruthless commitment to your art. Don't be ambitious for fame or TV or movies. Art is a jealous mistress and will brook no competitors. Study all the time. Never stop reading. Never stop learning speeches. It will fill you up - define and refine you.

I believe that good television should be challenging and frustrating and maddening and thrilling. If you just want to see people who look like you and think like you and do what you would do in any given situation, you'd have to stop looking at TV and start looking in a mirror. But would that be as much fun?

Unlike film and TV, theater is a luxury object, but one that ordinary middle-class people can still afford. Above all, it isn't a mass medium: Live theater is a small-scale, handmade art form. Intimacy is what makes it special.

When you make a TV show, they always say you're a guest in someone's home. Online, you're a guest in someone's face. So that's why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I'm in your face.

It's not easy to do morning TV. A lot of people think you just show up and be yourself, but one of the hardest things to do is be yourself when the camera comes on.

People start panicking because they think it's the end of everything. But the fact is, you know, books survived movies; books survived TV. Books are surviving manga and anime. Books will always be there in one form or another. You just have a larger palette of entertainment options.

So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.

It is not entirely true that a TV producer or reporter has complete control over the contents of programs. The interests and inclinations of the audience have as much to do with the what is on television as do the ideas of the producer and reporter.

I have to feel myself doing what's right. If I'm the arbiter of that instead of letting the guy on TV be that or someone who doesn't know me at all, then I think that's a much better way to live.

I don't make any distinction between a popular TV series or blockbuster film and doing Shakespeare. They're different, but as long as the material is good and the intention is honourable, it's all the same to me.

TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion.

How many shows on TV do you see young black people, both women and men, really embody a full-fledged human being, flaws and all?

Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.

I remember the first time seeing myself on TV, when my family was watching the documentary 'Eyes on the Prize' for the first time. There were pictures of people going up the school stairs, and Mom said, 'Oh, that's you!' I said, 'I can't believe this. This is important.'