Viola Davis 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.

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.

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.

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

He is sorry- For everything- For Prentisstown- For Viola- For Ben- For every failure and every wrong- For letting his pa down- And he's looking up at me- And he's begging me- He's begging me- Like I'm the only one who can forgive him- Like it's only me who's got the power- Todd?- Please- And all I can say is "Davy-" And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much- It's too much- And then it stops. Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him. And he lies there, still. Davy Prentiss is dead.

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.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past.

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

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

Quoting Viola Davis (who is sharing rules she lives by): '4. I will not be a mystery to my daughter. She will know me and I will share my stories with her—the stories of failure, shame, and accomplishment. She will know she’s not alone in that wilderness.

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.

I don’t have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn’t love me has to say about me.

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.

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

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.

Your only job as an artist is to put the truth out there into the world.

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.

(Quoting Viola Davis) I will not be a mystery to my daughter. She will know me and I will share my stories with her—the stories of failure, shame, and accomplishment. She will know she’s not alone in that wilderness.

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.

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

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

Or perhaps we should just ask Todd." I pound the glass right at his face. He doesn't even flinch. And then she says, "Todd would never tell you. Never." And the Mayor just looks at me. And he smiles My stomach sinks, my heart drops, my head feels so light I feel like I'm going to drop right to the ground. Oh, Viola- Viola, please- Forgive me. "Captain Hammar," the Mayor says and Viola's plunged into the water again, unable to not scream out in fright as down she goes. "NO!" I shout, pressing myself against the mirror. But the Mayor ain't even looking at her. He's looking right at me, as if he could see me even if I was behind a brick wall. "STOP IT!" I shout as she's thrashing again- And more- And more- "VIOLA!" And I'm pounding even tho my hands are breaking- And Mr. Hammar is grinning and holding her there- "VIOLA!" And her wrist are starting to bleed from where she's pulling- "I'LL KILL YOU!"- I'm shouting into the Mayor's face- With all my Noise- "I'LL KILL YOU!"- And still holding her there- "VIOLA! VIOLA!"- But it's Davy- Of all people- It's Davy who stops it.

Free, I think. They're free. (is this why she joined them?) I feel so- So relieved. I pick up the pace as I near the opening, my hands gripping my rifle but I have a feeling I ain't gonna need it. (ah, Viola, I knew I could count-) Then I reach the opening and stop. Everything stops. My stomach falls right thru my feet. "They're all gone?" Davy says, coming up beside me. Then he see what I see. "What the-?" Davy says. The Spackle ain't all gone. They're still here. Every single one. All 1150 of them. Dead.

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.

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

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

Mr Davis was a middle class tremble of a man worried about an unseemly display and his Jerry Springer moment

Courage is the cure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Success pales in comparison to healing.

You'll never see a U-Haul behind a hearse,' Denzel Washington often said as we worked together on 'Fences.' 'I don't care how much money you have or what level of notoriety you've achieved, you can't take any of it with you.' There is a cap on earthly success, a ceiling on the amount of joy that possessions and awards can bring before disillusionment sets in. Our appearance, our prosperity, the applause: all of it is so fleeting. But a life of true significance has unlimited impact. It is measured in how well we've loved those around us, how much we've given away, how many seeds we've sown along our path. During her ninety-six years, Ms. [Cicely] Tyson has discovered the potent elixir: she has lived a life of that is bigger than she is, an existence grounded in purpose and flourishing in service to others. That is her defining masterpiece. That is her enduring gift to us all. [Viola Davis, Foreword]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Who told you that?" I say. "Davy Prentiss?" He blinks. "What?" "What do you mean what?" My voice is harder now. "Your new best friend. The man who shot me, Todd, and who you ride to work with laughing every morning." He clenches his hands into fists. "You've been spying on me?" he says. "Three months I don't see you, three months I don't hear nothing from you and you been spying? Is that what yer doing in your spare time when yer not blowing people up?" "Yeah," I yell, my voice getting louder to match his. "Three months of defending you to people who'd only be too happy to call you enemy, Todd. Three months of wondering why the hell you're working so hard for the Mayor and how he knew to go right for the ocean the day after we spoke." He winces, but I keep going, thrusting out my arm and pulling up on the sleeve. "Three months wondering why you put these on women!" His face changes in an instant. He actually calls out as if he felt the pain himself. He puts a hand to his mouth to stifle it but his Noise is suddenly washed with blackness. He moves his fingertips of his other hand within reach of the band, hovering over my skin, over the band that'll never be removed unless I lose my arm. The skin is still red, and band 1391 still trobs, despite the healing of three mistresses. "Oh, no," he says. "Oh, no." The side door opens and the man who let me in leans out. "Everything all right out there, Lieutenant?" "Lieutenant?" I say. "We're fine," Todd chokes a little. "We're fine." The man waits for a second, then goes back inside. "Lieutenant?" I say again, lowering my voice. Todd's leant down, his hands on his knees, staring at the floor. "It wasn't me, was it?" he says, his voice quiet, too. "I didn't-" He gestures again at the band without looking up. "I didn't do it without knowing it was you, did I?

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

There's an unspoken message that the only stories worth telling are the stories that end up in history books. This is not true. Every story matters. My father's story matters. We are all worthy of telling out stories and having them heard. We all need to be seen and honored in the same way that we all need to breathe.

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.

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

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

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

Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you." -Viola Davis, Oscar-Winning Actress

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.

I often think about a statement Viola Davis made when she won her first Oscar. Something along the lines of encouraging people to go to the graveyard and dig up all the dead bodies in order to hear and tell the stories of those whose dreams were never realized. Those are the stories she’s interested in telling. Although that is valid, I must challenge it. This book is proof positive that you don’t need to go to the graveyard to find us. Many of us are still here. Still living and waiting for our stories to be told—to tell them ourselves. We are the living that have always been here but have been erased. We are the sons and brothers, daughters and sisters, and others that never get a chance to see ourselves nor to raise our voices to ears that need to hear them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me, over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.” That was Harriet Tubman in the 1800s. And let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there. So here’s to all the writers, the awesome people that are Ben Sherwood, Paul Lee, Peter Nowalk, Shonda Rhimes, people who have redefined what it means to be beautiful, to be sexy, to be a leading woman, to be black. And to the Taraji P. Hensons, the Kerry Washingtons, the Halle Berrys, the Nicole Beharies, the Meagan Goods, to Gabrielle Union: Thank you for taking us over that line. Thank you to the Television Academy. Thank you.

VIOLA DAVIS TAKING HER WIG OFF ON HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, 2014

Pare de fazer amor com o que está te matando.

Todo mundo tem segredos. Todo mundo. Acho que a diferença é que ou morremos com eles e deixamos que nos devorem, ou os colocamos para fora, lutamos com eles (ou eles lutam conosco) até que… nos reconciliamos. Segredos são o que nos engole.

você pode, sem a menor dúvida, reescrever sua vida. Pode redefini-la. Não é preciso viver no passado.

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.

The only weapon I have to blast through it all is forgiveness. It's giving up all hope of a different past.

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.