Viola Davis Finding Me Quotes

My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don’t have to live in the past. I found that not only did I have fight in me, I had love.

I now understand that life, and living it, is more about being present. I’m now aware that the not-so-happy memories lie in wait; but the hope and the joy also lie in wait.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given.

Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.

May you live long enough to know why you were born.” —CHEROKEE BIRTH BLESSING

I knew my life would be a fight, and I realized this: I had it in me.

It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?’” What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through this life without scars.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past.

Everything had been hard for me. I mastered hard. Now, I wanted joy.

May you live long enough to know why you were born.

As soon as he came into my life, my life got better because I created a family with him, with someone who loved me. I was no longer solely defined by the family that raised me and my childhood memories.

When you’re poor, you live in an alternate reality. It’s not that we have problems different from everyone else, but we don’t have the resources to mask them. We’ve been stripped clean of social protocol.

And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it.

Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye says that “a person’s love is only as good as the person; a stupid person loves stupidly, a violent man loves violently.

Taking off the wig in HTGAWM was my duty to honor Black women by not showing an image that is palatable to the oppressor, to people who have tarnished, punished the image of Black womanhood for so long. It said all of who we are is beautiful. Even our imperfections.

learned the hard way that when there are underlying issues, money does nothing. In fact, money exacerbates the problem because it takes away the individual’s ability to be held accountable.

There is no way out. Every painful memory, every mentor, every foe served as a chisel. A led path that has shaped me. Me. The imperfect but blessed sculpture Viola that still being chiseled. My elixir: I am no longer ashamed of myself. I own everything that happened to me.

I could create my own family and I could create it intentionally with what I had learned.

Show me the hero. Show me the tragedy. Heroes always cause their own downfalls. I didn't want to be a hero.

Courage is the cure.

There was an expectation of perfectionism without the knowledge of emotional well-being.

Remember the love. . . . Don’t play the pain and betrayal, play the woman fighting hard to restore the love.

That’s what he asked me next. It was a big moment for me. I said, “No, but I’m doing the work. I’m in therapy. I’ve gotta clean things up before I can invite anyone into my life to love me.

It is a widely held belief that dark-skinned women just don't do it for a lot of Black men. It's a mentality rooted in both racism and misogyny, that you have no value as a woman if you do not turn them on, if you are not desirable to them. It's ingrained thinking, dictated by oppression.

When my dad passed, part of my heart went with him that’s never coming back. I feel the same way about Julius. I feel the same way about my child, my mom, sisters. It’s one heart. They are completely entwined in my spirit.

Luck is an elusive monster who chooses when to come out of its cave to strike and who will be its recipient. It’s a business of deprivation.

I’m no longer ashamed of me. I own everything that has ever happened to me. The parts that were a source of shame are actually my warrior fuel. I see people—the way they walk, talk, laugh, and grieve, and their silence—in a way that is hyperfocused because of my past. I’m an artist because there’s no separation from me and every human being that has passed through the world including my mom.

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for." —Thomas Merton

The obstacle blocking me was a four-hundred-year-old racist system of oppression and my own feeling of utter aloneness.

had no understanding that there would be hard times and then joy would come, or sometimes the shoe would fall, but failing wasn’t permanent. None of that emotionally healthy thinking was instilled in me. I only understood secrets, suppression, succeeding at all costs, overachieving. You make it or you don’t. You either sink or you swim.

Memories are immortal. They're deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that's based more in other people's tucked-up perceptions than truth.

When I look back at what I’ve seen, my only thoughts are that it’s amazing how much a human body can endure.

We are after all observers of life. We are after all a conduit, a channeler of people. What you haven’t resolved in your life can absolutely become an obstacle in the work that you do.

I was sold lies for two years and the worst part is that I believed it because I couldn't combat it with anything else.

Success pales in comparison to healing.

The TV and film business is saturated with people who think they're writing something human when it's really a gimmick.

It is a powerful memory because it was the first time my spirit and heart were broken.

For a whole generation of Black people we were the dream. We were their hope. We were the baton they were passing as they were sinking into the quicksand of racism, poverty, Jim Crow, segregation, injustice, family trauma, and dysfunction.

What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through life without scars. No way!! It's a friggin' emotional boxing ring, and either you go one round, four rounds, or forty rounds, depending on your opponent. And by God, if you opponent is you...you will go forty. If it's God, you'll barely go one because Big Daddy has a rope-dope down! He's a shape shifter. You think you're fighting him, screaming, punching, begging him for help. And he leaves you with...YOU.

The air in the room shifted again. Or was it the air in our lungs? It’s that life-changing thing that happens when you’re seen, valued, and adored. Adoration for girls validates our femininity. When you are a dark-skin girl, no one simply adores you. They laugh with you, tell you their secrets, treat you like one of the boys . . . but there’s no care given to you, no devotion given to you. The absence of that becomes an erasure.

Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise.

This was genius. This was art! Expression that is born out of the necessity of ritual to navigate life.

We were “po.” That’s a level lower than poor. I’ve heard some of my friends say, “We were poor, too, but I just didn’t know it until I got older.” We were poor and we knew it.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.” —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The invisibility of the one-two punch that is Blackness and poverty is brutal. Mix that with being hungry all the damn time and it becomes combustible.

I’m no longer ashamed of me. I own everything that has ever happened to me. The parts that were a source of shame are actually my warrior fuel.

Abuse elicits so many memories of trauma that embed themselves into behavior that is hard to shake. It could be something that happened forty years ago, but it remains alive, present.

What does that mean?” I asked again. “Look, I’m always going to be that fifteen-year-old boy whose girlfriend broke up with him. That’s always going to be me. So, who are you?” Who am I? I was quiet, and once again that indestructible memory hit me. Then I just blurted it out. “I’m the little girl who would run after school every day in third grade because these boys hated me because I was . . . not pretty. Because I was . . . Black.” Will stared at me as if seeing me for the first time and just nodded. My throat got tight and I could feel the tears welling up. Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.

If I created a fable of my life, a fantasy, I see myself finally meeting God, gushing, crying, thanking the Almighty for the accolades, a fabulous husband, beautiful daughter, my journey from nothing to Hollywood, awards, travel. I can clearly see the Lord’s face, staring at me, taking me in and saying, 'You never thanked me for creating you as YOU.

The constantly being beaten down so much makes you begin to feel that you’re wrong. Not that you did wrong, but you were wrong. It makes you so angry at your abuser, the one that you’re too afraid to confront, so you confront the easiest target. Those you can. Until your heart gets tired. No one ever, up until that point, talked to us, asked us what our dreams were, asked us how we were feeling. It was on us to figure it out. There is an emotional abandonment that comes with poverty and being Black. The weight of generational trauma and having to fight for your basic needs doesn’t leave room for anything else. You just believe you’re the leftovers.

Being with that group of women who so easily gave up their vanity and just went for it was a huge learning curve for me.

I answered the call to adventure...

For every one actor who makes it to fame there are fifty thousand more who did exactly the same things, yet didn’t make it.

Juilliard's academic approach did not connect the work to our lives. It missed the true potency of artistry, which is that it shifts humanity. Art has the power to heal the soul.

But even some of the mightiest of warriors have wounds that leave them debilitated.

I was a powder cake of secrets. I kept them in because it allowed me to get through my day. I couldn't let what I was feeling out.

My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don't have to live in the past.

One of the beauties of getting older is really getting to know a parent.

Why are you trying to heal her? I think she was pretty tough. She survived.

Art has the power to heal the soul.

They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.

My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don’t have to live in the past. I found that not only did I have fight in me, I had love. By the time we clicked, I had had enough therapy and enough friendship and enough beautiful moments in my life to know what love is and what I wanted my life to feel and look like. When I got on my knees and I prayed to God for Julius, I wasn’t just praying for a man. I was praying for a life that I was not taught to live, but for something that I had to learn. That’s what Julius represented.

I am a dark-skinned woman. Culturally, there is a spoken and unspoken narrative rooted in Jim Crow. It tells us that dark-skinned women are simply not desirable. All the attributes that are attached to being a woman-desireable, vulnerable, needing to be rescued-don't apply to us. In the past we've been used as chattel, fodder for inhumane experimentation, and it has evolved into invisibility.

first ingredient I needed to be an artist, the power to create. The power of alchemy, that magical process of transformation and creation to believe at any given time I could be the somebody I always wanted to be.

The journey of a hero I learned from writer Joseph Campbell, that a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in, they are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self the final goal is to find the elixir, the magic potion – that is the answer to unlocking her. Then she comes home to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others.

Memories are immortal. They're deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in ways that's based more in other people's tucked-up perceptions than truth.

Here's the truth. If you have a choice between auditioning for a great role over a bad role, you are privileged. That means not only do you have a top agent who can get you in, you are at a level that you would be considered for it. Our profession at any given time has a 95 percent unemployment rate. Only 1 percent of actors are famous, and we won't get into defining famous. The 0.04 percent are the stories you read about in the media. 'Being picky,' 'dropping agents,' making far less than male counterparts. Never having any regrets in terms of roles they've taken. Yada, yada, yada.

I think my dad just got tired of the anger, the rage, as an answer to his inner pain. Either you give yourself over to it in a sort of emotional suicide or you simply get it. What do I think he got? That he was loved. That he was needed. That he mattered. I believe he changed as a way of asking for our forgiveness.

It’s that life-changing thing that happens when you’re seen, valued, and adored. Adoration for girls validates our femininity. When you are a dark-skin girl, no one simply adores you. They laugh with you, tell you their secrets, treat you like one of the boys . . . but there’s no care given to you, no devotion given to you. The absence of that becomes an erasure.

The final stretch to finding me would be allowing that eight-year-old girl in, actively inviting her into every moment of my current existence to experience the joy she so longed for, letting her taste what it means to feel truly alive. The destination is finding a home for her. A place of peace where the past does not envelop the Viola of NOW, where I have ownership of my story.

What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through this life without scars. No way!! It’s a friggin’ emotional boxing ring, and either you go one round, four rounds, or forty rounds, depending on your opponent. And by God, if your opponent is you . . . you will go forty. If it’s God, you’ll barely go one because Big Daddy has rope-a-dope down! He’s a shape-shifter. You think you’re fighting him, screaming, punching, begging him for help. And he leaves you with . . . YOU.

For every one actor who makes it to fame there are fifty thousand more who did exactly the same things, yet didn't make it. Most of the actors I went with to Juilliard Rhode Island College, Circle in the Square Theatre, the Arts Recognition Talent Search competition are not in the business anymore. I think I can name six, and many, you wouldn't even know. It doesn't speak to their talent, it speaks to the nature of the business. Trust me when I say most were beautiful and talented, and some has incredible agents. It's an eenie, meenie, miny, mo game of luck, relationships, chance, how long you've been out there, and sometimes talent.

remember seeing an episode of Golden Girls where Bea Arthur, who plays Dorothy, responds to a question from Rose, played by Betty White. “What do you want in your next husband?” asked Rose. And Dorothy says, “I want someone to grow old with.” That’s what most people don’t want. They want the young. They want the cute. When you get older, you change. You change physically. You change emotionally and a whole other area of life rears its head. Your body slows down, retirement; death becomes all too real. A lot of people are not in it for the long haul. They’re not in it for the changes the life journey brings—the health scares, death. I do want someone to grow old with. I understand those elements.

For my speaking gigs, the title of my presentation is always the same: 'The journey of a hero'. I learned from writer Joseph Campbell, that a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in. They are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self. The final goal is to find the elixir. The magic potion that is the answer to unlocking HER. Then she comes "home" to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others... My journey was like a war movie, where at the end, the hero has been bruised and bloodied, traumatized from witnessing untold amounts of death and destruction, and so damaged that she cannot go back to being the same woman who went to war. She may have even seen her death but was somehow resurrected. But to go on THAT journey, I had to be armed with the courage of a lioness... Individuals on the journey eventually find themselves experiencing a baptism by fire. It's that moment when they are just about to lose their lives, and they, miraculously, courageously find the answer that gives their life meaning. And that meaning saves them. In the words of Joseph Campbell, in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", "The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero. The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth, or the dreamer in a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposites, his own unsuccessful self, either by swallowing it or being swallowed. I still see my younger self so clearly from that fateful day in my therapist's office. She stands up, in tears, on a mound of snow. Pissed off, she shouts, "Bitch!!! I'm not going to be swallowed!

Sumole”—Hello, how are you? “Ibije”—I am fine. “Kon te na te”—How’s your family? “Te na te”—They are fine. “Kara be”—I am here. “Kara jon”—I see you.

Forgiveness

Abuse elicits so many memories of trauma that embed themselves into behavior that is hard to shake.

I found out weeks later when I had the courage to look up how to comfort the dying that they don’t feel heat or cold in the end. They usually have visions of people in their life who had passed before them. They have them because they need permission to cross over. You have to validate that. You keep their lips moist and give them little sips of water if they can take it. Most importantly, the number one comfort is this . . . hold their hand. My daddy

You get auditions based on the level you are at. It's hard to see when your journey to the top had more ease, but in reality, there is no ease. You do what the lucky person did, you have a 99 percent chance of it not ever happening for you. Only about 4 percent of actors in the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union make enough for Plan 1 health insurance and that's $20,000 a year. That is our reality.

He who has choices has resources. And the life needs of some twentysomething actor are not the life needs of everyone. Health insurance, mortgage, children are not the top priority of most twentysomethings. Yet the people who are aspiring to be actors and have no knowledge as to a way in listen to the testimonies of the privileged. The ones who were extremely talented, but also extraordinarily lucky. Luck is an elusive monster who chooses when to come out of its cave to strike and who will be its recipient. It's a business of deprivation.

We always hope that it lands in our favor. At least, that’s how stories play out onscreen. There is living life for pleasure, great moments, and living life waiting for doom and gloom. Life exists somewhere in the middle.

Fame is a vapor. Popularity is an accident. Riches takes wings. And only one thing remains . . . CHARACTER.” —HORACE GREELEY

Shame completely eviscerates you, destroys any sense of pride you may have in yourself.

Without knowing, I had already been imprinted, stamped by their behavior and all that they were. As much as I wanted my life to be better, the only tools I had to navigate the world were given to me by them.

Working hard is great when it’s motivated by passion and love and enthusiasm. But working hard when it’s motivated by deprivation is not pleasant.

Even though my mom and dad didn’t go to college—didn’t finish high school—Dianne had driven it into us that We. Were. Going. To. College. She instilled in us that if we did not have a college degree, if we did not find something to do, if we did not focus, if we did not have drive, we were going to be like our parents. I felt if I did not go to college, if I did not get a degree, if I was not excellent, then my parents’ reality would become my own. There was no gray area. Either you achieved or you failed. I love them dearly, but I didn’t want to live a life of poverty, alcoholism, and abuse. I thought I had only two choices: either succeed or absolutely sink. No in-between. I had no understanding that I possessed the tools to dig my way out if I somehow made a mistake. I had no understanding that there would be hard times and then joy would come, or sometimes the shoe would fall, but failing wasn’t permanent.

I have a Jewish friend who is Modern Orthodox. He said one of his rabbis said, “It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?

Luck is an elusive monster who chooses when to come out of its cave to strike and who will be its recipient. It’s

I felt if I saved anyone, I had found my purpose, and that was the way it was supposed to work.

It’s like Oprah said, “I know for sure what we dwell on is what we become.

I ain’t never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain’t nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.” —AUGUST WILSON

gave me temporary self-love from the outside. But it would soon wear off because self-love from the outside, by definition, really isn’t self-love. So I quickly went back to my ordinary world where I felt awkward. I could handle my quirkiness, pain, shyness

You can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people." Anne Lamott

I ain’t never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain’t nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.

This was art! Expression that is born out of the necessity of ritual to navigate life.

of Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, “The call

Annalise Keating released in me the obstacles blocking me from realizing my worth and power as a woman. Before that, I created a story. Sometimes stories are straight-up lies that you make up because you want what you remember to be different. Sometimes a story is simply how YOU saw that event, how you internalized it. And sometimes the truth simply is. Simply straight-up fact. I was erasing that made-up story. I decided it was time to tell my story, as I remember it, my truth.

you. That “I deserve” way of thinking is hard to reconcile in this business. A better question is this: Do you want to be an actor or do you want to be a famous actor? If you want to be famous, as the great Alan Arkin said, you will have a hard time. If you want to be an actor, you will find a way.

I was a powder cake of secrets. I kept them in because it allowed me to get through my day. I couldn't let what I was feeling out. Any chance I had to be part of something where I could make a mark, I joined in.

Layers upon layers of deep, dark ones. Trauma, shit, piss, and mortar mixed with memories that have been filtered, edited for survival, and entangled with generational secrets. Somewhere buried underneath all that waste lives me, the me fighting to breathe, the me wanting so badly to feel alive.