A person can be big, because of spirit. A person can be big because of their position in the family, the hierarchy in the family. That role has been played by women who are quite thin. – Phylicia Rashad
Loving oneself isn’t hard, when you understand who and what ‘yourself’ is. It has nothing to do with the shape of your face, the size of your eyes, the length of your hair or the quality of your clothes. It’s so beyond all of those things and it’s what gives life to everything about you. Your own self is such a treasure. – Phylicia Rashad
As artists, we do the work that we do. Receiving an award or not receiving an award in no way diminishes one’s talent or value. – Phylicia Rashad
If the playwright knew every little thing about his play, why bother? There must be discovery all the time, otherwise why bother to do it? – Phylicia Rashad
Any time women come together with a collective intention, it’s a powerful thing. Whether it’s sitting down making a quilt, in a kitchen preparing a meal, in a club reading the same book, or around the table playing cards, or planning a birthday party, when women come together with a collective intention, magic happens. – Phylicia Rashad
Things have a way of moving to the left, and then they move back to the right before somebody finds themselves in the center. That seems to be the nature of the creative world. It’s not stagnant. I don’t get upset about it. – Phylicia Rashad
The stubbornness I had as a child has been transmitted into perseverance. I can let go but I don’t give up. I don’t beat myself up about negative things. – Phylicia Rashad
What I love about being an actress is being able to really look into myself and understand another human being. – Phylicia Rashad
I love theater. To have the people onstage right there, to be working in concert with other artists, this is a like a school of fish moving together. – Phylicia Rashad
We are told there is not enough money for education, but somehow there is enough money for people to raise billions of dollars to defeat somebody in an election? Oh! Okay! Does that make sense? – Phylicia Rashad
If there are no films or plays of interest to me, I don’t go. I know how to go to a museum or a library or pick up a good magazine or I can watch the sun set. I know how to live. There’s a whole creation out there full of magic and wonder to be explored. – Phylicia Rashad
I think the real understanding comes when we recognize our humanity in each other. That’s not just between blacks and whites. That’s between all religions as well. – Phylicia Rashad
There’s all kinds of mothers, so to use the label ‘mother’ and to think you really understood all that a human being is because she’s a mother, is a mistake. – Phylicia Rashad
What he showed me was not what I had to get, but what I already have. I am just myself, and who I am is a lot. – Phylicia Rashad
Every role affords me something different in the way of understanding, and that’s really why you take these roles, not to show that thing that people talk about of showing what you can do – that has nothing to do with anything. – Phylicia Rashad
What’s in front of you is a whole world of experiences beyond your imagination. Put yourself, and your growth and development, first. – Phylicia Rashad
Historically, if you look at great civilizations, why do they crumble? Is it because of what’s outside or because of something internal? It’s always internal. It is. – Phylicia Rashad
Success for me means being able to work. I don’t look at so much at what I’ve done as much as I look to what I will do. – Phylicia Rashad
Let me just say that to imagine racism does not exist is imagination. And to imagine that it does not create its own set of problems is true imagination. So let’s not imagine that racism is gone, extinguished, because it’s not. We are seeing this in the top levels of the political arena, and we are seeing it very, very plainly. – Phylicia Rashad
There’s always something to suggest that you’ll never be who you wanted to be. Your choice is to take it or keep on moving. – Phylicia Rashad
There was a time when I couldn’t watch sitcoms for a while because it was just cacophony, it was just noise. – Phylicia Rashad
