-
College football, acting, opera singing - I approached them all in the same obsessive way.
Forest Whitaker
-
My wife, Keisha, came home once, and I had these violinists playing for her, and I'd prepared dinner for her, and I write poems. She's pretty amazing, so I like to celebrate that. She's really taught me how to celebrate life; that's something I've learned.
Forest Whitaker
-
On the whole, I now see my work as being an expression of my spiritual life and, because I look at it that way, I have a different centre. I go through the stress and pressure, but I think I'm lucky because I come from a different source point.
Forest Whitaker
-
I think I've made some choices that maybe I wasn't so sure about for some reason or another. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Even when I was young, I played Bird, and that's a role people wait for their whole lifetime.
Forest Whitaker
-
My eye? It's a genetic thing. My dad had it, and now I have it. You know, I just found out that it may be correctable a little bit, because it does impair my vision. When I look up, I lose sight in this eye. I think, maybe for other people, it informs the way they see me.
Forest Whitaker
-
In life, there's a ladder sometimes, and maybe at the top, there's a mirror. You take a step up, then maybe three steps down... just because you don't want to face the decloaking in the mirror.
Forest Whitaker
-
Directing is more comfortable for me because, as an actor, there's always something inherently false. Because I'm not that person.
Forest Whitaker
-
I was in middle school right around the time the Bloods and the Crips started taking root in Compton and a lot of the other neighborhoods around me. I saw way too many of my peers - smart, kind, good kids - who got drawn into gangs and violence, and their futures were going to be forever scarred by that.
Forest Whitaker
-
In high school, I did some musicals, but I never took acting until college. I was studying opera, classical voice, and a speech teacher asked me to audition for this play, and I got the lead.
Forest Whitaker
-
Fame allows you a lot of opportunities to experience new things and connect with people. But on the other hand, people's perceptions of you can limit the scope of your relationships with them. You walk both lines.
Forest Whitaker
-
The first time I ever went out of the country, it was to London. I was with the choir from my college, and we were touring around all these different churches. I loved it so much I tried to find a way to stay there.
Forest Whitaker
-
For many child soldiers, war and violence are all they have ever known. If we don't take it upon ourselves to show them an alternative, then they're going to be soldiers forever, and they'll continue to be recruited and to participate in violence if another conflict starts five or 10 years down the road.
Forest Whitaker
-
I am just back from South Sudan, one of the world's most fragile nations. For years, I have been moved by the kind people who maintain hope that they will live to see peace. My heart has ached for them, as they have endured pain and violence that make such hope feel out of reach.
Forest Whitaker
-
You have to ask if the country would have been ready for Barack Obama if we hadn't been prepared by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. If they hadn't already been in positions of enormous power and influence - secretary of state, secretary of defence - you know what I mean?
Forest Whitaker
