Quotes from Sterling K. Brown

I go to grad school at NYU, and I learn all these things about speech and voice and games. It's like camp for an actor, and I got a chance to immerse myself 12 to 14 hours a day in what I love.

I'm a spiritual person. I do believe in a higher power. I believe God placed me on this planet to be a beneficial presence.

Muhammad Ali was the greatest of all time. But what made him even greater was what he did outside the ring.

Every time I'd do a play, my grades would get better because I was doing something that fed my soul. It took me a couple of years to recognize that the hobby was actually the calling.

I think, for the first time, people are starting to say, 'That's Sterling K. Brown,' which is cool, which is uncharted territory for your boy. It's nice to be called by your name when you're not in character.

I have tremendous respect for Christopher Darden, and I recognize him as an individual of integrity, who did his job to the best of his ability, and I want to tell him thank you. Thank you for enduring hatred from his own community, for being ostracized and called an Uncle Tom and a sellout.

I have a certain memory of the way in which my father loved me until I was 10, and it was unconditional and eternal. I get to carry that for the rest of my life, but on a practical level after age 10, it's just me sort of figuring it out.

I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and now my kids are growing up in Los Angeles, so that's culturally very different.

In my mind, I'm still this kid from St. Louis, Missouri, that nobody really knows.

I'm a little kid from St. Louis, Missouri, on the inside.

Understand what you want, and want it as badly as you can. Make the stakes for yourself as life-or-death as you can.

We've seen many Black men lose their life over the past couple of years. Not only just heard about it.

The prism through which you experience life is so unique. There is no objective experience.

One of my favorite things to do, when the ghost light is on and it's just an empty stage - I'll let my shadow spread right across the theater, and I just say to myself, 'For the next few hours, these folks are my responsibility. I get to share in something that is unique.' It's like church.

I think what Hollywood is learning at large is that there is profitability in stories that are culturally specific and that you can only address the universal through the specific.

As a freshman at Stanford University - a young black man - when O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, it was a joyful moment. I was happy, absolutely. It wasn't necessarily a matter of whether he was guilty or innocent, per se, it was a matter of finally seeing someone who looked like me have the justice system work in their favor.

I've spent so much of my career working intermittently, being busy and then with large swaths of time off, that it became the norm.

I remember the great work that Norman Lear did. That was an incredible heyday to be a black actor.

I have gay people in my family who weren't able to openly discuss homosexuality, and I feel like that's shifted, especially here on the coast.

I'm obsessed with how people talk! Accents, dialects... So whenever I go someplace where an accent is extremely distinct - Minneapolis, New Orleans, Jamaica, Vancouver - I always find myself trying to pick up the subtleties of their patterns.

My family did a lot of road trips across these continental United States when I was a kid. Twenty or so of us would caravan in four or five vehicles and hit every corner of the connected 48.

I'm pleased it turned out the way that it did, because I know lots of other people who did fantastic work and did not see this particular kind of recognition [like Emmy].

I went to a college prep high school in St. Louis, Missouri. When I graduated from school, I owned this thing called the Headmaster's Cup, and the Headmaster's Cup is for the student who exemplifies the spirit of the institution and is recognized by the faculty and administration.

I've been able to pay the bills. I've been able to pay off my student loans. I was a homeowner before anything happened in the larger public eye.