Quotes from KiKi Layne

For young girls to see someone who looks more like her, doing and being her. That's where my ambition and drive comes from, it's being so insanely committed to that. To achieve that, I'm doing everything I can.

I used to climb trees and ride my bike way too fast downhill.

I love big jewelry trends and moments, especially some gold hoops.

The black community is under attack in so many different ways.

Making films is such a large, collaborative effort and there's so many people who are a part of it.

Who do I have a cinematic crush on? I mean, it's such a go-to: Michael B. Jordan. I was like, it's everybody's go-to. Who else?

It's not lost on me to have the ability to be wearing custom Dior or Gucci, with my box braids or my bantu knots. It's another opportunity to show that Black girls belong in these places and that what I naturally bring as a Black girl belongs as well.

I started off with the flute and French horn, and then I was playing trumpet in the jazz band.

Some things shoot in Chicago, but even those things that shoot there still cast their bigger roles in L.A. or New York.

When men are put into these types of circumstances like Bigger in 'Native Son,' or Fonny in 'Beale Street,' it destroys relationships, their love, their relationships with their children - it's under attack.

The only thing I'm sure of is that I want to keep doing work that speaks to me.

All of us can relate to when something happens in your life and it just completely changes it. Now you have to figure out how you're going to move forward.

I will never forget my first Valentino Haute Couture show.

My mom knew we were going to call me Kiki by birth. I think she had the nickname before she had my name, and she then found the name that would allow that.

When you hear these stories about different cases of police brutality, don't even just make that person just another hashtag, another statistic. That is somebody's father, brother, sister, mother - be more aware of what that means.

It's important for me to not be put into any type of box because that steals the fun of acting. I want to do everything.

I'm not one of those people that's like, 'I'm about to serve on this Whitney Houston song at like 2 A.M.' No. Karaoke? I'm just like, 'Live your best life.' We're not worried about those notes, we just living.

An unlikely source of inspiration? My nieces and nephews. I feel encouraged to keep going because I know that if I keep going, then I can tell them to keep going.

I'm trying to be what I want to see more of: Black women onscreen.

I want to have the kind of career in which I'm accomplished and respected enough that I'm able to open doors for other people, especially those who look like me. That's what happiness and success could look like for me.

I just think the way Regina King carries herself in this industry is something to strive for. Even though she's been in the business as long as she has, she's still just one of the most genuine, realest people I've met so far. And so watching her, I realize that I don't have to change who I am at the core in order to have a career.

I'm hopeful that, at the end of my career, wherever it takes me, there's a lot of variety.

I want a career filled with a lot of variety.

Like, no, I can really be queen of the universe. I can be president. I can be, I don't know, an alien from Venus. Like you could just seriously... and that's the fun of acting.