Quotes from Joe Morton

If you want someone who is sort of still, has a bit of an edge, is older, you get Morgan Freeman. If you want someone who can carry a gun and still play a father, you get Danny Glover. My category is 'that guy who happens to be black.'

For all of the diversity in 'Scandal,' no one else would be sitting in a room wearing a T-shirt and chains and call a Southern white Republican president a 'boy.' And it's those kinds of things that Rowan has the freedom to say that nobody else could say within the confines of the show.

In the 1980s, there was no category to stick me in. 'He sounds too smart' is what I was hearing. I realized that I had to become a member of the school of what I call 'ugly acting.' Which meant I wanted to do what Dustin Hoffman did very successfully: to play character roles, but lead character roles.

Accolades are there to congratulate you but also to make you understand that it's not over. You now have to continue trying to improve the craft and keep going. It's not something to rest on.

Is it racist to prefer country music over the blues? Or is it simply a classic case of tribal antipathy toward the unfamiliar, in favor of gravitating to what you know?

I think that, unfortunately, it appears that Donald Trump is trampling all over the Constitution.

'Paycheck,' I thought, was a really, really good idea. I never got an opportunity, unfortunately, to read the novel, but I loved the idea of how to deal with intellectual properties. I just don't know that we necessarily got to the heart of that particular idea. I think it became more of a chase movie than anything else.

We've all grown up with 'Ozzie and Harriet,' 'Father Knows Best,' 'Eight Is Enough.' White families have always represented the universal family.

I started off at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, and started doing theater in Manhattan in 1969.

When I first saw Dick Gregory on television, growing up in Queens, it was startling and amazing, because nobody else was doing what he was doing.

Part of the decision I made was to move very fluidly from one medium to the other, and so it has stayed as part of who I am. I don't know if I have a preference.

It's funny: We have so many shows and so many channels and so many things to occupy people as entertainment, especially with a show like 'Scandal,' which is clearly a hit, with a lot of heat around it - but every once in a while, people will say, 'What are you doing?' and I'll say 'Scandal,' and they'll have no idea what I'm talking about.

Everywhere I go, someone stops me and says, 'Oh, you're that guy from 'Terminator 2.'' So, it's something that has, you know, been around me since the movie came out.

In my opinion, it would be a lot better for the culture - meaning the culture of America - if there was more diversity in terms of storyline. In terms of the kind of content that you see about Americans of African descent on the screen.

When was the last time you saw a straight black love story without any guns?

Race prejudice has nothing to do with color. It has to do with being the stranger.

By the time I graduated, I was the drum major, the highest-ranking officer, and third in my class.

We live in a world where racism hasn't changed at all. It's that old thing of, you know, the more things change, the more things remain the same.

In most science-fiction pictures, the black guy is either an engineer or a radio operator, and he is the first guy killed - gone from the movie.

One, I had never worked with John Woo before and I wanted to see what that was like, and two, Ben Affleck is a friend, so it would be fun to work with him again.

Television has been really good to me in terms of the roles I've been able to get on TV as opposed to the roles I've gotten in film and in theater.

My father was in the service. His job was to integrate the Armed Forces overseas. So that meant we showed up at military bases in Okinawa or Germany, racially unannounced. That made me, in that particular society if you will, the outsider.

My father was in the military; he was a captain. His service was to quote-unquote integrate the Armed Forces overseas.

When we were bringing 'Raisin' onto Broadway, our first stop was at Arena in D.C. Several things struck me about being in D.C.: One was the enormous poverty around the capital at that time - it was 1973, '74 - and I was stunned by people literally living in poverty, with holes in their houses and other things.