Quotes About Empowerment

I want first and foremost to help other artists, launch new names, to provide opportunities. I want to do for them what happened to me, but better.

I have been sexist before. I have called girls names. I have gone with the misogynist flow.

My parents named me Arlette, and I changed it to Agnes when I was young. I didn't like it because I don't like names with 'ette' - you know, it looks like a little girl's name.

I want to be able to pick up a list of names of graduates from high schools and colleges in the city and to see that that list is longer than it was when I started in 2009.

I remember, growing up, it wasn't sexy to be African. We got called names.

There were moments where I was called many derogatory names. I've gotten into a couple of fights. People have jumped me. You know, I've had a lot of things that have happened to me, but I look past those things now.

I don't care if someone calls me names.

I agree with my sister when she said that certain people, whose names have cropped up in the #MeToo movement, should not be allowed to work. That's the stand which the industry should take.

I don't want to live in a nanny state where people are telling me where I can go and what I can do.

I never wanted Mary Poppins to be my nanny. I wanted to be her when I grew up.

I cannot step into any day without help. I have a fantastically engaged husband who is very present for his children and our family life. We've got a brilliant nanny, other help from parents-in-law, godparents, friends. Also, I've had incredible women around me in the business.

The gender is irrelevant; the identity is the one you should try and create for yourself by yourself, and the narrative of your own life becomes your own book.

When I was growing up, there was still that narrative of 'you finish school, you go and get married, you become somebody's wife and you get kids and tend to them.' I think it is really important to reach for something.

When you take charge of your own narrative, it gives you a handle on it.

I think there is this narrative that if you are a black woman, and you are strong, and you are educated, it's like, 'Good luck getting a black man.'

I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can't and shouldn't be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering.

Strong female characters - even if they don't necessarily make the same decisions that we might - make such great narrative material, especially when there's an equally strong male character in the mix.

I had a lot of great bosses - I worked for Gina Prince-Bythewood for two years, I worked for Ava Duvernay as a PA on her first narrative film, and I worked with Mara Brock Akil, so a lot of wonderful role models.

For so long, the narrative - I'm speaking for Latinx - we've been invisible, the ones cleaning and taking care of your kids and doing your lawns.

The narrative needs to change. Asian-American actresses don't want to be the damsels in distress anymore. We don't want to be saved, especially by a white man.

'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' and Paula are alternatives to what we, as plus-size women in America, have been told is our narrative, which is, you should be hating yourself or hating others for how you look.

Separation in culture and arts does nobody any favors except for the people in power. That's just it... So I feel like I'm in the business of challenging that narrative.

Women often get ignored from main narrative, especially in films.

What I'm really proud of Beyonce and Solange, they understand the importance of creating the narrative. It's all about the narrative and how you position yourself with your narrative.