Quotes from Chadwick Boseman

I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It's either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there's always a buzzing beneath you.

I think the most stressful time of my life was when I was in New York, and I didn't have money to pay my rent.

I'm not so keen on letting my car drive itself.

I'm from Anderson, S.C., but I grew up in the South. So I know what it is to ride to school and have Confederate flags flying from trucks in front of me and behind me, to see a parking lot full of people with Confederate flags and know what that means. I've been stopped by police for no reason.

I would love to have an ocean of love right now. That said, the number-one rule of acting is, 'Do not seek approval from the audience.' People don't realize that. You can't do stuff to get applause. You have to live in the truth.

When I met Rachel Robinson for the first time, she is a regal woman, and she was like a grandmother in that first meeting.

Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.

I got scars from every film I've done, every TV show.

I might have had too many friends in my twenties.

When you're doing a character, you want to know the full landscape. You want to know them spiritually, mentally and physically.

Once you start getting big roles as an actor, everything pays. So what are you making decisions on? It's about the director or the script or whatever. But before you reach that point, you're taking jobs with, say, a theater company, in spite of the fact that it's not paying your bills.

I'm the kind of guy who comes home and checks scores for everything. I'm a sports fan in general, so I pretty much keep up with who's ahead in a division and everything that's going on.

For me, being a complete artist means not necessarily just being in front of the camera, but being behind the camera or being the originator or creator of something.

You're not free unless you can show the good and the bad, all sides of them. So to me, when I play a character, it's important that I can show every aspect of them.

I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write. I write when I'm tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.

As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.

I wasn't a comic book geek as a kid. I read some, but it was just like, 'Oh, I have this comic book here.' It wasn't like I was collecting them.

Guys are natural problem solvers - they like to have strategies.

I studied at Howard. I studied at Oxford.

I'm not afraid to work.

When I got out of school, I didn't really understand the differences in the different aspects of the business. For example, doing a play - where does that take you versus, you know, concentrating on independent films? You might have one thing in your head, but the things you're doing don't really lead down the right road, necessarily.

I don't have a smart house. My house is very dumb.

I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.

I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.