Quotes About Empowerment

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

What really turns me on about technology is not just the ability to get more songs on MP3 players. The revolution - this revolution - is much bigger than that. I hope, I believe. What turns me on about the digital age, what excites me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing.

Pay attention to how you think and speak, and if it turns out that you're sounding snide or crappy or doubtful, make the conscious decision to change.

Women's lives get more interesting the older they get. For some reason, when you hit 35, it turns into a grey area filmically. There's not much more until you start playing grannies. I'm not ready for that. I'm just naffed off that, between 35 and 50, there aren't better things about.

What people have thought of me, of the turns that I've taken, has never really played into my decisions.

I never thought I'd enjoy collaborating so much, but turns out it feels like a super power if you collab with the right people.

I hope that there's a little black boy somewhere in Montana that never thought that he would see a reflection of himself, and he turns on the television, like, 'Oh my God, thank you.'

Not so much the sound but as a person, I would say Katy Perry inspires me because you can always see that she's being true to herself. She focuses on her music and even turns down big producers. Her whole career and music is about her being herself. I want to be more like that.

In groups, who sings this part or that part always turns into an issue. Eventually, you get the courage to go out on your own.

When I first started going out to lesbian clubs, I felt a very binary recreation of hetero culture. There are butches and femmes, and I felt like I was neither of those things. I'm in a turtleneck and jeans and just learning to be comfortable in that space. I realized I don't have to be a certain way.

People are always telling me how much they loved 'Empire Records.' We had so much fun making that movie. I was so young - 16 or 17. I still had a tutor!

Across the Jewish community, the MLK Shabbat Suppers are part of Repair the World's multi-year effort to mobilize Jews across the nation to serve as tutors, mentors, and college access coaches for public school children.

Seeing RuPaul go out there and not only create music, but TV and film roles, and continue to go down so many creative avenues - that is inspirational. For a person of color like myself, I see RuPaul and I say, 'Oh, honey, I can do it too.'

Who would've thought that this little girl in the ghetto in Philly would be playing the first black lesbian superhero on network TV?

If you can't see, you can't be. If we don't see BAME people on the TV, or in film, we become invisible.

I'm thrilled to be part of Channel 4's Black to Front - which quite rightly gives a platform to deserving Black British TV talent across our industry, both on and off-screen.

The last thing we need is women on TV hating each other.

Every so often, we - women in film and TV - get annoyed and frustrated. We kick up a fuss and make some gains. But then we become complacent, and things slide backwards again until the next generation comes up and gets frustrated again.

I want to create a TV show, I want to direct, I want to produce.

You don't make a movie by yourself; you certainly don't make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking.

A great byproduct of a TV show, movie, or play is when it can act as a catalyst for someone.

When I look at my body, I'm like, 'I'm a lead of a TV show?' To have a man in the business say, 'Come along just as you are,' is really an incredible thing.

One of the things we try to do on 'The Fosters' is shine a light on the problems and the people that get pushed to the periphery. From the very beginning of the show, when we told people we were putting foster care at the center of a TV show, even the people who work in the system were afraid.

Hopefully I've inspired a lot of people who thought they'd never be able to get their own TV show to give it a go.