Quotes from Courtney A. Kemp

Humans are powerless, and even in our exercise of free will, either the Universe is gonna get down with your plan, or it isn't.

I say a prayer several times a day about what I can control and what I can't control.

I think it's really cool that someone could have ovaries and the presidency. Growing up, I thought I could never be president because I was black and female. Now I know that's wrong. Within my own lifetime - that's different. Within my lifetime, interracial couples are more common. Within my own lifetime, biracial folks are able to claim that.

When you pretend to be an authority on everything, it forces your subordinates to defer to your opinion - which may not be the most informed in the room. If you have humility concerning the gaps in your experience or ability, it allows others to shine.

Wherever I go, stuff accumulates.

Being a showrunner is doing a bit of everything. It's not just writing. It's also management: managing actors, managing producers, managing a crew, being kind to people, being a good boss, observing deadlines.

The baseline character in a lot of Western literature is a man. So we, as women, do a lot of suspending of our disbelief to experience a novel or a play or a movie through that male character.

When you write a show, every character is you to some extent.

There are so many different things that create an alchemy of success. Just like there are so many different things that create an alchemy of a failure.

What I'm about to say won't be popular, but it's true: If being a television showrunner is the job you want, and you are a woman, I would not suggest you have children. The reality is that you just cannot do both well.

Not many people get to create a television show that actually makes it on the air.

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

I want to tell more stories about lying, dual lives, self-deception - those are my favorites.

As a woman, I don't feel like I have a responsibility to create better female characters. I feel like I have a responsibility to create good characters. Because the truth is, those kinds of things ghettoize us even more as writers.

The only black folks in town when I was growing up were me and my cousins and one other family.

When it comes to power as it functions between humans, it all comes down to desire. If you know what someone wants, you can control them. It is as simple as that. And the reverse is also true: If you have control over your own desires, no one will ever own you. As humans, we are plagued with desire - it consumes us, it fuels us, it destroys us.

I remember watching episodes of 'The Sopranos' and being filled with dread knowing what was coming or anticipating what was coming. I don't think that that's always a bad thing. I think sometimes the audience needs a little catharsis held away from them.

I thought I was going to be a professor; then I ran screaming from there into magazine journalism.

I called my show 'Power' because, for me, the whole series is about the way my main character, Ghost, is power-less over his circumstances, even though he has almost endless access to money and guns.

Great partnerships thrive because the people need each other.

People are realizing that there is a financial consequence to not opening doors. It doesn't mean that they are any more inclusive in their hearts - it means they're more inclusive in their wallets.

Great power is setting a goal, working hard for it, and achieving it in exactly the way you expected with no consequences and no remainders after the long division is done. But does that happen to anyone? The unexpected always hitches a ride along with everything you planned.

There's hip-hop music in 'Power,' but the show is not about the hip-hop industry.

The revolution is that we can be anything. We don't have to be one thing or the other. The idea that it is my responsibility to represent only good black people... I mean, what are you talking about? That's not a character - that's a polemic.