71 Quotes by Cicely Tyson

One lady told me that before she saw 'Sounder' she didn't believe black people could love each other, have deep relationships in the same way as white people.

My mother was an introvert and quite religious. And we were brought up in the church. And when she learned that I wanted to act, she simply said: 'You cannot live here and do that.'

The choices of roles I made had to do with educating and entertaining. And as a result I found myself working only every two or three years.

We have to support our own films. If we don't, how can we expect others to support them?

When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused

When I told my mother that I wanted to be an actress, she said, you can't live here and do that, and so I moved out. I was determined to prove her wrong because she was so sure that I was going to go astray. And that's the juice that kept me going

I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.

Ali... we should have gone to see that movie. Malcolm X was another one

I saw that I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. So I made a choice to use my career as a platform to address the issues of the race I was born into.