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The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you.

Viola Davis

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Viola Davis
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: August 11
Actress
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Television Producer
St. Matthews
South Carolina
La Viola Davis
Chance
Successes
Give
Screws
Giving
Encouraging
Way
Status
Good
Extraordinary
Life
Along
Basking
World
Wall
Navigate
People
Personal
Screw

More quotes by Viola Davis

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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
Viola Davis
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But the biggest beauty advice I've given my daughter is every morning I say, Genesis, what are the two best parts of you? And she says my brain and my heart. And I say, You've gotta remember that, Genesis. You've gotta remember that you're not what you look like, you know? I think that's the best beauty advice I could give her.
Viola Davis
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We know the road of lack of recognition, of people telling us that we can't headline a movie because black women don't translate overseas, that every time we try to break the glass ceiling, people say no, people push back. And it's everything that people don't see out there.
Viola Davis
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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
Viola Davis
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Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.
Viola Davis
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The sentiment that I had a little trouble with was the idea that, You change the school, you change the community. I couldn't wrap my mind around that.
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We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.
Viola Davis
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Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.
Viola Davis
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I look back at pictures of myself and I remember thinking, I was so fat when I was growing up. I was 165 pounds when I graduated from high school. I was a mess.
Viola Davis
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To me, it's always a luxury to be able to work with the best of the best because they make it easier for you to do what you do.
Viola Davis
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I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.
Viola Davis
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Acting, it's the disappearance of self, disappearance of your own needs and your own wants and the kind of embracing of the character that makes it work.
Viola Davis
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I have a lot of spiritual books that I read that I really, really love - everything from the Bible to Joseph Campbell, who I love. He wrote The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's about exploring what is heroic in you. It helps me a lot.
Viola Davis
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Ordinary people who are just kind of just going about their lives are transformed into heroes because they have the courage to put their voices out there. I think that's a powerful message in this time of political strife.
Viola Davis
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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.
Viola Davis
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They say, 'To serve is to love,' and I think to serve is to heal, too.
Viola Davis
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You don't get the pay-off when you're playing a quiet character, so sometimes you want to just throw out all your work and say, Okay, let me do something really funny or gimmicky, just so that I can get some attention in this scene.
Viola Davis
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As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.
Viola Davis
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I think sometimes you have to see a physical manifestation of your dream. Otherwise you have to hope, pray and try to conjure something in your mind to feel like it's possible.
Viola Davis
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I've done a really bad job with teaching daughter to put on makeup, but I have taught her how to put on lipstick.
Viola Davis