Being myself. Not paying attention when people say you’re great and not paying attention when people say you’re horrible.

Wendy Williams

Wendy Williams on Her Secret to Her Success

March 3, 2015

Source: Miami Herald, 2015

Let me say for the record, I am not a gangster and never have been. I'm not the thief who grabs your purse. I'm not the guy who jacks your car. I'm not down with people who steal and hurt others. I'm just a brother who fights back. I'm not some violent closet psycho. I've got a job. I'm an artist.

When I was growing up, trying to have hair I didn't have, straightening it, using heat, I was actually ruining what I was given. It was when I realized I needed to stop trying to be somebody else and be myself, I actually started to own, accept and love what I had.

Tracee Ellis Ross

You have to be true to yourself and love yourself first.

People are always making suggestions to me. Like. ‘We love you, but why don't you do this or do that with your makeup and you'd be a knockout.' If they love me, why do they want me to change?

Whoopi Goldberg

Stay on it, stay strong on your path. Many will say no, and that’s okay cause all it takes is that one yes. After that it will all start happening. You can’t give up. Don’t compare your acting life with others. We all mature as actors on different times and levels. Go after your dreams with all you’ve got and then some, because success is waiting for YOU, just around the corner.

Anthony Anderson

I stay focused and I just keep going.

Vanessa Bell Calloway

Comparing yourself financially, workwise, or personally to any other person is fake. Because you don’t know where they came from. You only know where you came from.

Own your uniqueness and all that makes you who you are because there’s no better you… than you.

Marque Richardson

Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

Denzel Washington

I'm not a stereotype; I'm not somebody else's version of who I am.

When I graduated secondary school, what I really wanted to do was go straight to the hair salon and get my relaxer, so my hair would be straight. Then I came to the U.S., and ... I couldn't afford to get a relaxer at a hair salon here because I thought it was just needlessly expensive. So I went to the drugstore and bought the relaxer kit and decided to do it myself, which didn't end well. Having then a scalp with really bad burns, I suddenly thought, 'Why am I even doing this?' And that's when I stopped using relaxers. And it took a while to accept my hair for the way that it grows from my head.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I don’t want to be good at it, I don’t want to be pretty good at it, I want to be world class at it.

Number one: find yourself. Find what you want, find what you can handle and what you can’t handle.

Tia Mowry-Hardrict

Do you know, it's funny but I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage. I am what I am. I love me! And I don't mean that egotistically – I love that God has allowed me to take whatever it was that I had and to make something out of it.

I’m terrified to not have the courage to be authentic.

Once I realized that I had a voice and didn't have to pretend to be a different version of myself, I stopped forcing the situation, stopped being a character. I stopped and went, 'OK, I can just be me.'

I don’t owe anything to anyone.

The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat.

Whatever you do, you’re going to do it at your pace and however it is that you do it. It’s going to be different from how anybody else does it and that’s enough. That’s all it has to be.

I’m sorry. I’m a human being. I’ve got opinions, I’m not always right, I’m not always on time, I don’t always say things in the proper way, but my intentions are always extremely pure.