Quotes from Aja Naomi King

My hair routine is to let someone else do it.

I love Haagen Daaz Caramel Cone, or the Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake. Pairs well with anything.

My ideal date would involve a park or rowing in those little boats on a lake.

I come from a family of storytellers. Growing up, my father would make up these stories about how he and my mother met and fell in love, and my mother would tell me these elaborately visual stories of growing up as a kid in New York, and I was always so enrapt.

I really appreciate that: to walk into an environment where everyone is serious and dedicated to creating the best performance possible and challenging themselves to figure out the most interesting way to approach the work.

When you do a play, you have all this time to rehearse and grow into the character. In television, even though you're waiting and waiting and waiting, once you're actually on set engaging in the scene with another actor, time is of the essence.

Love is a complicated emotion because you can learn something or hear something that goes against what you have come to know personally. It can be very challenging to what you believe.

I use Pureology Shampoo and Conditioner, and after shampooing, I'll put the conditioner on, go watch a movie, and wash it out later. When you have black girl hair, once we wash, we've gotta do the whole press and get in the edges and everything. That's a lot of heat to go back to straight on a daily basis.

To meet someone who wants to fight to just tell the truth about what's happening in government... this is a real life superhero right here.

To relax, I love sitting back and turning my brain off and watching TV.

You don't know what's gonna happen, so you can't really plan: you can only go with it.

I want to write. I want to direct. I want to produce - I want to inhabit what I think it means to fully be an artist.

Sometimes as human beings, we're so contradictory - we may say something or do something and completely contradict ourselves. That's what I'm learning to embrace in television - not knowing what's going to happen.

Being on a show with a female lead is amazing for me. I love that.

I always think - when I get mad, and people say, 'Don't be the angry black woman' - it's like, well, why not? There's so much to be angry about.

Television has embraced so much in terms of storytelling and in terms of a wide array of characters conveying stories from different points of view.

Words can't describe how one would feel in that moment after doing a test for something you really want but in your heart you don't think you have a chance of getting.

I've been performing since I was a child; my mother would have to pull me aside and tell me that I wasn't onstage. I was a cheerleader, president of choir, and in the school play.

I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.

We all have our family issues from time to time.

If you ask two people to remember a specific event, the stories are going to vary wildly because we always make ourselves out to be the hero.

I have a lovely light blue Kate Spade wallet. It has pockets for many credit cards, business cards, health insurance cards, and a Burke Williams card for when I want to go to the spa!

I thought I was going to be on Broadway. I thought, 'I'm going to do theater.'

If all we remember are good things, then happiness is our baseline, and there's no longer happiness. We need other feelings in order to appreciate others.