Quotes About Diversity

I've always essentially been a New Yorker.

I knew I didn't want to come out in the 'New Yorker'; it just felt wrong. It needed an African conversation.

I grew up in New York City - I grew up surrounded by every sound that you imagine can come from a New Yorker. All of the different boroughs and all of the different sounds.

I've little in common with the scene in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I'm a New Yorker.

I don't see myself as either Irish or American, I'm a New Yorker.

I've always just considered myself a New Yorker, you know.

You'll see every kind of New Yorker in there. You really feel like you're in the belly of the beast when you're in Union Square.

I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish.

The musical heritage of Yorkshire is deep and wide.

Once you kind of get past doing the Yorkshire Championships, and the Northern Championships, and you go to the British Champs it's like, 'oh wow, diversity!'

Every time I come, I'm still amazed at the breadth California has. Big Sur, Yosemite, the desert... I love it.

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

We live in a society that wants to label you with a color, sexuality, religion, or ethnicity. It divides us, but it also allows us to find pride in our identity.

Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?

I think you can make fun of anything except things people can't help. They can't help their race or their sex or their age, so you ridicule their pretension or their ego instead. You can ridicule ideas - ideas don't have feelings. You can ridicule an idea that someone holds without hurting them.

If there's anyone out there that looks a bit like me, or just feels a little bit out of place just trying to get into performing, you are beautiful; embrace it. You are intelligent; embrace it. You are powerful; embrace it.

It's just surreal because I get to empower other little African-American girls around the world and say that you can be a superhero, and you rock, and you can conquer the world, and you are beautiful just the way you are, and your flaws are nothing, and you're awesome.

In L.A., you have to drive; in New York, you can do it on foot. The variety, the potential, of people is in your face. Like any good creator, you want to steal everything.

We often grow up being told that we can do this or that, but if you don't see anybody that looks like you doing it, you don't believe you can do it. But I had great teachers, and I wanted to be a great teacher.

You don't always just have to do an indie movie to feel like you're controlling it with a few people that you really have connected with, creatively. You can do it on a bigger scale.

The thing is to convince people that a part not written for a Latina woman - or maybe not even written for a woman at all - is a female part. You convince them you can do it.

If you want to be an actress or an astronaut or a doctor or anything in between, I just want to let kids know - and especially kids that look like me know - that you can do it. Even though you're not seen, you can make yourself seen.

To me, that's the most exciting aspect of Pilates. It doesn't matter who you are - athlete or couch potato, toned or flabby, man or woman, young or old - you can do it. Every body can benefit.

If Adam Sandler does a bad movie, he doesn't bring down the whole white race. But if Tyler Perry does, it's like, 'See what you guys do?' and that type of thing.