Quotes from Mike Colter

What I like about my character: Luke Cage is a person first and foremost. We do have other black superheroes, but he's important because he's touchable. Luke has moments when he has to try to forget his pain, but then, unlike the rest of us, he's also able to channel that frustration into fighting bad guys. Real martyrs aren't trying to be martyrs.

We are in a diversity age. I talk about the lack of diversity for black Americans, but what about the Asian Americans? You don't see them very often. They have a show called 'Fresh off the Boat.' No one is talking about that show. I saw it, and I found that show completely offensive, but I'm not Asian American.

No, no. I draw the line there. Anything that's going to show an outline of my manhood is not on.

Harlem for me is Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C., in one place. You have very significant churches that have had national ramifications. At the same time, you have politics. On top of all that, you have entertainment because you have 70 years of music that came out of here, and if you scratch that, gangsterism happens.

Sometimes you meet someone at an inopportune moment and it doesn't work out, but then you see them again five years later and you're in different places and it's a better time.

As an actor you just want to continue to work on things that you like. You can be in this business a long time and consistently working and just be totally artistically unfulfilled.

I guess it's a bit cliché, but as an actor, I really admire good writing. There are a lot of great ideas out there, but it's the execution that really makes it work.

I like to take a break, but at the same time, I think most actors are not very good at sitting around doing nothing because we like to work.

As an actor, you learn, every time you work.

If things are not working out, they just stop going forward.

We all act differently in certain places. We don't want to admit it, but we're different where we grew up than we are with our family and than we are with the guys that we went to college with or our fraternity brothers. People just exist differently. It's small, subtle things, but different colors come out. That's all there is to it.

There's no book to figure out how not to become a victim of police brutality.

My mother wanted to be an actress. She wanted to follow her dreams, and she never really got a chance to do that. I feel like I'm following her dream in a way.

Part of acting is always just being available emotionally and open to people.

If you're not enjoying your work, what's the point?

It serves anyone, when they're going into some project, to try to distance themselves from the material so you can really have an objective viewpoint.