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" I always try to remain aware that what affects others affects me, too. "
Forest Whitaker
Try
Too
Others
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" I'm fascinated by the capacity to be able to do harm. I struggle every day with the ability of people to do evil. Not just the big things - the petty things that people do in order to make someone feel small, when it's so easy to do, and it hurts so much. "
Forest Whitaker
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Evil
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" I've been fortunate, I guess: I've gotten to play a lot of very diverse roles for quite a long time. But in the beginning, I was thinking, 'I'm not gonna do certain characters. I will be willing to say no and live on a couch.' And I was really happy. "
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" I can play a man who's despicable. But I'll still look inside him to find a point of connection. If I can find that kernel, audiences will relate to me. "
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Play
" 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. "
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Experience
" It's all about destiny. That's why people look at the zodiac or the I Ching - because there's a certain order to life, and that order has been lived since the beginning of time. No matter what you do, you're going to live inside of it. "
Forest Whitaker
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Destiny
Life
" I always stand up for what I believe and what I want to. "
Forest Whitaker
Stand
Stand Up
I Believe
" 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
Spiritual
Work
Think
" Poitier opened the doors to so many artists, not just black artists. There is a line that goes from black to Latin to Asian with regards to roles. "
Forest Whitaker
Doors
Line
Artists
" I'm inspired to work with good actors, period. I want to work with the best anytime because I think they'll make me better. "
Forest Whitaker
Best
Work
Better
" As an actor, I've always wanted to do characters that would help me find my connection with others and connect all of us together. You always want the energy of the character, the spirit of the person, to enter you. I've been doing this for 26 years and some of the things I've done are always with me. "
Forest Whitaker
Help
Character
Energy
" Look - I'm an African-American. I'm black. But I'm just looking at the character and trying to find his soul, his energy. If you can wipe away the blanket of skin and flesh that people tend to see, and look inside for the essence of the soul, then that's the work I'm doing. That's the work I always do. "
Forest Whitaker
Soul
People
Looking
" I think I didn't know whether I wanted to keep acting deep into my career. I kept trying to see if I would be able to do it well enough to make that part of my destiny or part of what I was supposed to do. "
Forest Whitaker
Know
Acting
Destiny
" 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
Know
Me
People
" To try and act like we haven't had great progress is not true. Obama didn't fail - he changed the psyche of the nation and, in some ways, the world. "
Forest Whitaker
Nation
Great
True
" I submerged myself in all the information that I could find about Idi Amin. I mean, before I left Los Angeles, I was studying Kiswahili. I was working on the dialect. I was studying every documentary and tape of him that I could find - not just visual, but also audiocassettes, even in other languages when he was speaking in other dialects. "
Forest Whitaker
Studying
Myself
Information
" When we talk about the issue of child soldiers, it can be easy to focus just on ending recruitment and liberating those boys and girls who are currently being held in military camps. Obviously, both of these are incredibly important goals, but it's also essential that we not forget about former child soldiers once they are liberated. "
Forest Whitaker
Important
Child
Focus
" Good science fiction is always based in contemporary truths. "
Forest Whitaker
Science Fiction
Always
Good
" Ultimately, all human beings fulfill their patterns. We're set in a certain archetype, and we fulfill that destiny. "
Forest Whitaker
Destiny
Patterns
Human
" In a lot of films, they're showing more complete, developed characters of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The larger concern is to be able to tastefully explore the stereotypes, and still move past them to see the core of people. "
Forest Whitaker
See
People
Stereotypes
" 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
Role
Bird
Wait
" I really wasn't even sure if I should continue acting. I would like try and figure out if I could be good enough to do it. It was like 10 or 12 years into my career before I felt like maybe I can do it. It was such a different time than now. "
Forest Whitaker
Time
Enough
Career
" In some sense, when you take a child soldier out of an armed group, you've taken away the identity he or she has had for years, and you can't assume life is just going to return to normal. "
Forest Whitaker
Identity
She
You
" The Internet is part of our evolution. The mystics used to say, 'We can travel across the planet in a thought.' Now we really can. We can be connected with a million people at a time. "
Forest Whitaker
Internet
Travel
Thought
" 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
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School
Smart
" 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
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Influence
" 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
Face
Mirror
Life
" As human beings, we all have reasons for our behavior. There may be people who have certain physiological issues that dictate why they make certain choices. On the whole, though, I think we're dictated by our structure, our past, our environment, our culture. So once you understand the patterns that shape a person, how can you not find sympathy? "
Forest Whitaker
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" I'm always surprised when an actor goes so deeply into the truth that they shake you to your core. "
Forest Whitaker
Core
Truth
You
" May we remain connected in love. We are one. "
Forest Whitaker
May
Connected
Love
" My wife is completely different from me: she's good with everyone, whereas I'm good at directed conversation when I have a purpose for it, like now. If everyone's sitting around being social, I'm not great. "
Forest Whitaker
Me
Good
Great