Quotes About Opportunity

You can't look into a crystal ball but what you can say is if money is put on the table and you get half your signings right then you are going to be better next time around.

Very little gets offered to me. I have to audition and bawl my eyes out. For 'Broadchurch,' the scene was Danny lying on the mortuary table. I can't remember the last audition I had where I didn't come out drenched in sweat, puffy-eyed.

I have to have a seat at the table. I have to have a say on how we, as African-Americans, are produced and depicted around the world. Along the way, I'll be very fair to white people.

Los Angeles has always been on the table with us.

I just cannot have an offer on the table and just let it go.

I just feel that no matter what comes in a career - and mine has been all over the map - you must stay at the table, pick up the cards you're dealt and play them.

I believe in just enriching the economy. And we're leaving so much on the table, 72 percent of the planet.

I started doing radio commercials for Kmart when I was 4. They had to splice all my consonants together because I couldn't talk very well. But these jobs helped my mother and me put food on the table. It took the two of us working.

'FlashForward' was on the outs when I was approached with 'Happy Endings.' I literally got the script on a Friday, and on Saturday morning I met with David Caspe, Jamie Tarses, and the Russo brothers. I took the role on that Saturday, and on Monday I was doing a table read. It all happened very fast, but it was super exciting.

We must speed up the time table for fathers, brothers and sons to provide their mothers, daughters and sisters with the same opportunities that they give themselves.

Every company I know is looking for more women at the table. Every board is looking for more women at the table. There's a reason why men want to understand the challenges women face, address them, because then they're going to be better hirers, attracters and retainers of women.

Where I'd like to see more women is at the executive table.

It matters whether women sit at the table. No one speaks up for you when you are standing outside with your nose pressed up against the glass. You cannot window-shop for power.

I didn't choose 'Silver Spoons'. I think my mom and agent chose it because at that time there was a lack of patience on some of the people that were in charge of my career. I think there was a big offer on the table, and I think they took it.

Let's say you would see me in a lot more big movies had I done movies that I'd been asked to do playing bad guys. Now that I have a child on the way, I think that you'll probably be seeing me play more bad guys. If that's what's going to put bread on the table, that's what I'm going to be doing.

As the daughter of immigrants, growing up in New York City, you are either at the table or on the menu.

I try not to and I don't think I ever have just jumped at any opportunity because a company wanted me. Just because there was money on the table doesn't mean that I took it.

Success is created in studio apartments and garages, at kitchen tables, and in classrooms across the nation, not in government conference rooms in Washington.

Although we use a lot of technology and consume a lot of technology as people of color, we're usually not the ones at the tables doing the creating of it.

So when it was my turn to start developing projects, I knew the writers I wanted to work with, and I had met every head of studio, every executive and a lot of producers. I started finding things, little crumbs off other people's tables that I would make my own.

'Heathers' was probably the first time when I started to notice that people were opening doors for me and giving me tables at restaurants, regardless of what I was wearing. A whole world opened up to me that was shocking and weird and different, and I enjoyed it, and, you know, I took great advantage of it at times.

Look around at things that just aren't getting done. Maybe there's a project you could tackle. Maybe there's an issue that always gets back-burnered for other priorities. Challenge yourself to take on those difficult assignments. They're learning opportunities, and you have a chance to change something for the better.

You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny, and all the things that a person could be. If you can achieve that, you feel great. You so rarely get to do that as an actress in general, but as a black actress, it's almost never.

The lack of diversity in higher education is a problem we as a country must tackle if we're going to live up to our promise.