We can climb mountains with self-love.
I was a good bartender. I wouldn't say I was the best bartender in New York, but I could hold my own.
You have people who are so passionate and touched by my work, which is so humbling. But other times, it's a little overwhelming. If I'm just trying to go to the bodega and get some coconut water, I have to put on a hat and some glasses - those kind of things.
There's a play that Chekhov wrote called 'Uncle Vanya,' and I when I was in school, I played Sonya, and sometimes people ask me if there was ever a role I could play again, that's definitely the role I would play again: Sonya in 'Uncle Vanya.'
I eat a lot. I probably eat more than anybody that I know. I'll go on set and get a plate of bacon, a bagel, an omelet, boiled eggs, fresh fruit, oatmeal, fresh juice, potatoes, basically anything that's there. I don't mean that I alternate between these things. I'll eat all of this for breakfast.
There was this girl who went to my school, and she did a Nikki Giovanni poem, 'Ego Tripping,' and it was just different from everyone else's. It wasn't flat recitation. It had an energy and a life to it. And it made me sit up in my seat, and my eyes got wide, and I really felt inside myself, 'She's making me feel things. I want to do that.'
I'm a big lover of Shakespeare. In fact, the only plays that I've ever done professionally in New York have been Shakespearian.
I do get recognized, more and more every day.
I've seen my parents dragged through the mud. But I wouldn't be the person I am today without them.
The actors that I admire are able to step into so many different roles.
It's interesting to have two totally unlikable characters as the love interests on a show.
I think of the prisoners on 'Orange Is the New Black,' a lot of times, as uplifting.
To be honest, whenever I go to shoots, or I'm on set, it really makes makeup special and allows me to have so much more fun with it - I don't wear it on an everyday basis, because I like my skin to breathe.
I never want to pigeonhole myself or get typecast. I'm looking forward to my career and showing all of my range as an actress, and I'm looking at other mediums, too. I'm a theater actress first. And I cannot wait to return to the stage.
It is television; we're making television at the end of the day. It's all smoke and mirrors, and it's all fake, but it's not, because it makes people really feel things that are real.
When I was younger in the theater, I didn't really feel like I got much recognition from the powers that be. I got a lot of small roles - I never got the standout roles.
I think that all stereotypes sort of begin with truth. I think that the only problem is if that's the only place that you go.
Playing a character for four years, in people's minds, that's who you are.
It's one thing to live my own life and know that I'm O.K. But there's another thing I want to take on, and that is letting people know that they're O.K., too.
I was obsessed with Lil' Bow Wow growing up, and you couldn't see the white of my walls because they were plastered with his photos. This is even more embarrassing: I had a notebook full of facts about Bow Wow and different pictures. I basically made a biography notebook about him and his life when he was, like, 13.
