Viola Davis Quotes

As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

Viola Davis

• Together
• Artist
• Emotion
• Mess

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Quotes to Explore

• Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts. You can break this spell, but it takes training just like it takes training to defend yourself against a physical assault.

  

  Sam Harris
  • Character
  • Lost
  • Suffering

• My house looks like it was decorated by a 14-year old with a platinum American Express card.

  

  J. Michael Straczynski
  • American
  • House
  • Looks

• The life of an actor is never one to get comfortable.

  

  Jack McBrayer
  • Life
  • Never
  • Actor

• There is a humanitarian impulse that one aspires to and there are days when one doesn't do it very well.

  

  Ralph Fiennes
  • Very
  • Days
  • Humanitarian

• If someone says, 'I love that lipstick,' I will always try to answer, honestly, if I know what color it is. It's a connective tissue.

  

  Tamron Hall
  • Know
  • Always
  • Try

• Wong Kar-wai and Ang Lee are two Asian directors I'm really fond of.

  

  Bai Ling
  • Two
  • Directors
  • Asian

• One of the things I love about acting is that I can enter into these other people's lives. But going back to being me at the end of the day is very important, too. That process of remembering who I am.

  

  Sally Hawkins
  • People
  • Things
  • Acting

• That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.

  

  Gary Oldman
  • Character
  • Together
  • Teach

• Most people who went about saying a ghost had poked them with a brolly would be locked up somewhere.

  

  Pamela Stephenson
  • People
  • Up
  • Saying

• Chanting was very deep for me. It was as if I remembered it. It was like a real surrender.

  

  Ione Skye
  • Real
  • Me
  • Deep

• Hopefully in the future, generational challenges will be measured by achievement, not gender.

  

  Safra A. Catz
  • Future
  • Achievement
  • Gender

• We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

  

  A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
  • Up
  • Problem
  • Motivational

• With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.

  

  Oliver Goldsmith
  • Humility
  • Alive
  • Him

• I made a very conscious decision to quit acting. I was on a series, and we were in the process of renegotiating. They had an idea of what they thought I was worth, and I had an idea that was quite different.

  

  Taylor Sheridan
  • Different
  • Decision
  • Thought

• I don't want everything to be flowery perfection. I like it there to be a charge behind it, you know?

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • Want
  • Know
  • Perfection

• Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day. If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day, it doesn't matter if it's an oak or a redwood; eventually, the tree has to fall down.

  

  Jack Canfield
  • Action
  • Day
  • Fall

• In Europe and the United States, you've got different systems to select candidates, and no system is perfect.

  

  Karl Rove
  • Different
  • You
  • Perfect

• A great byproduct of a TV show, movie, or play is when it can act as a catalyst for someone.

  

  Jack Falahee
  • Great
  • Movie
  • Play

• It takes mystical insight to see the beauty and innocence in each other, even when that is not what we are showing to the world. That is why God is needed in intimate relationships, to move us beyond the perceptions that can so often poison love.

  

  Marianne Williamson
  • World
  • God
  • Why

• It wasn't not being famous any more, or even not being a recording artist. It was having nobody who needed me, no phones ringing, nothing to do. Because I'm still too young to do nothing. I was only 24 when all that happened. Now, at 40, I feel I've got more to give than I ever have.

  

  Gary Barlow Take That
  • Me
  • Artist
  • Famous

• 'Vanity Fair' did this grid thing a couple years ago, connecting people who've worked together, and I had the most branches on it or whatever, because I'd worked with so-and-so and so-and-so worked with so-and-so, and I was kind of in the middle.

  

  Bill Hader
  • People
  • Together
  • Couple

• ... a gaggle of old ladies is glued to the window at the end of the hall like children or jailbirds. They're spidery and frail, their hair as fine as mist. Most of them are a good decade younger than me, and this astounds me. Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.--There are five of them now, white headed old things huddled together and pointing crooked fingers at the glass.

  

  Sara Gruen
  • Mind
  • Children
  • Together

• As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Together
  • Artist
  • Emotion