 And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know. |
| So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy - being the thing that I should be most interested in - and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn't hack the senior class. |
| The goal wasn't to be a millionaire or to be a Hollywood star. That was not the goal. The goal was something about - the goal was to find the goal, but I knew where it was. |
| You don't build a bond without being present. |
| My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know. |
| I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time. |
| And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race. |
| Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race. |
| So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department. |
| One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter. |
| Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know. |
| One day, my youngest uncle - the other one who was first to go to college, Randy - and I were sitting out on the front porch. And he was brilliant. He ended up - he just retired from Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas. |
| The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose. |
| It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children. Topics: Parent |
| My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college. |
| You weren't going to the theater to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world. |
| So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know? |
| I really think I ambled through a lot of my life, or ambled from one thing to the other. |
| I was as content Off-Broadway as I was in a big Hollywood movie, and, I just try to be content wherever I am, you know. |
| I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors. |
