Acting is just common sense. It isn’t hard if you put yourself aside and just do what the writer wrote.
Yourself
You have great athletic directors, you let them run it; you keep yourself informed, but I’m not the athletic director. I’m the president of the university.
There’s always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself – whether it’s Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. – because that’s the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.
What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!
Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.
Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.