Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I was a curious child. I'd debate with anyone who came to the door - people from the Islamic community... Jehovah's Witnesses... anyone. "
Forest Whitaker
Door
Child
Community
Related Quotes:
" 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
Road
Child
Conflict
" It is possible for a kid from east Texas, raised in south central LA and Carson, who believes in his dreams, commits himself to them with his heart, to touch them and to have them happen. "
Forest Whitaker
Texas
Kid
Heart
" 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
Country
College
Loved
" 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
Walk
New Things
Experience
" I want to get better as an actor, to keep trying to work harder, trying to discover something different. In some ways, it's a pretty frightening experience. But normally, I do tend to walk against fear and hope that I'll be able to survive. "
Forest Whitaker
Want
Walk
Work
" When I was a kid, the only way I saw movies was from the back seat of my family's car at the drive-in. "
Forest Whitaker
Movies
Back
Car
" I always stand up for what I believe and what I want to. "
Forest Whitaker
Stand
Stand Up
I Believe
" I fell through a stage once. I was doing a truly African dance, and all of a sudden, I hit the ground with my foot and went straight through the stage. I guess they didn't have much money, so the floor was kind of rotting. "
Forest Whitaker
Stage
Dance
Doing
" I try to be like a forest, revitalizing and constantly growing... Kids would tease me, calling me 'Little Bush.' But... I thought being called Forest helped me find my identity. "
Forest Whitaker
Identity
Growing
Forest
" 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
Me
School
Smart
" If I go to a reunion in east Texas, my mother's side or my father's, one out of ten is a preacher or a teacher. That's just the way it is in my family. "
Forest Whitaker
Texas
Teacher
Mother
" 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
Life
Home
Amazing
" 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
" 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
People
Evil
Easy
" 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'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. "
Forest Whitaker
Live
Happy
Time
" It rests in the hands of the common person as well as those with the power to shape humanity's course toward a world where every child, woman and man's most basic needs are met. "
Forest Whitaker
Hands
Child
Man
" 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
" It's hard for me to judge my own films as an artist sometimes. But as an artist, I did feel a fulfillment working on them, you know? "
Forest Whitaker
You
Artist
Feel
" It's abhorrent to me that somebody is just evil, and you can't explain it. "
Forest Whitaker
Evil
Explain
Just
" It's important for youth, black youths particularly, to be able to fill in the blanks of themselves so they can know completely who they are, but also all the country to understand what this means: what the civil rights movement does to us as people. It is part of the journey that we must be on in order to become fully evolved human beings. "
Forest Whitaker
Know
Journey
Black
" I care about people. In the end, I think they feel it. It comes across, regardless of the character I'm portraying. "
Forest Whitaker
Care
Think
People
" I try to live my life in a holistic way, show that all of it intersects because I'm coming from the same place. Now, at the core of it, I'm just trying to connect and be there, so I'm trying to be there for my family, my wife, my kids, my friends. "
Forest Whitaker
Family
Live
Wife
" I think 'The Color of Money' was very instrumental in opening up other opportunities. People started to recognize me as an artist after that film. And then, after I did 'Bird,' it was more solidified. "
Forest Whitaker
Color
Money
Me
" Cinema and the arts invite viewers to focus on a story and, in doing so, peel away its layers and peer into the depths of the human soul. "
Forest Whitaker
Cinema
Arts
Story
" 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
" 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 had been playing really interesting roles before I got great roles. Little ones - 'The Crying Game' I loved working on, and then 'Bird,' 'Ghost Dog,' so many films. "
Forest Whitaker
Bird
Dog
Game
" 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