Love is a complicated emotion because you can learn something or hear something that goes against what you have come to know personally. It can be very challenging to what you believe. – Aja Naomi King
I saw ‘Birth’ at the Sundance Film Festival with a thousand other strangers, and I couldn’t believe that was me in the film. I didn’t recognize myself. – Aja Naomi King
To meet someone who wants to fight to just tell the truth about what’s happening in government… this is a real life superhero right here. – Aja Naomi King
It was a given at UCSB that if there was a role that called for a person of color, it was going to be handed to me. There were certain times when maybe I didn’t try as hard. Going to Yale was a way more diverse experience. – Aja Naomi King
I want to write. I want to direct. I want to produce – I want to inhabit what I think it means to fully be an artist. – Aja Naomi King
Your artistry is a muscle that needs to be exercised, so if all you are doing is auditioning, you’ll never get the satisfaction of fulfilling the need to play the part. – Aja Naomi King
The problem of sexism is getting better, but I don’t know if it’s getting better fast enough. We see more roles for women that don’t entirely revolve around the way in which they function in a man’s life, but typically those women are almost always white, and even then, there are only a few of them. – Aja Naomi King
Back when people couldn’t read, other people would take newspapers and turn them into theater so that people would know what was going on in the world. That is a powerful thing. – Aja Naomi King
When you do a play, you have all this time to rehearse and grow into the character. In television, even though you’re waiting and waiting and waiting, once you’re actually on set engaging in the scene with another actor, time is of the essence. – Aja Naomi King
I love the powerful woman who’s complicated. There’s no push to be one thing or another thing. It’s all human. That’s what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible. – Aja Naomi King
Create something for yourself that you feel proud of, that you are in control of, that gives you a better understanding of the type of artist you want to be. – Aja Naomi King
I really care about people, and I would need someone to also genuinely value other human beings and want to be connected with people in the world and to know about other cultures. That might not be a high standard for someone else, but for me, it’s really important to try and stick to that. – Aja Naomi King
I use Pureology Shampoo and Conditioner, and after shampooing, I’ll put the conditioner on, go watch a movie, and wash it out later. When you have black girl hair, once we wash, we’ve gotta do the whole press and get in the edges and everything. That’s a lot of heat to go back to straight on a daily basis. – Aja Naomi King
Diversity is such an interesting word. I feel like when people hear the word ‘diversity,’ they think that it means only people of color, when in reality, diversity is all-inclusive; it means everyone. – Aja Naomi King
I’ve been trying to eat healthier, but sometimes it doesn’t work out when you’re sitting in front of the TV drinking wine, and you realize you really need ice cream to go along with it. – Aja Naomi King
It gets a little crazy at Disneyland. It’s a little bit more hardcore then people think. – Aja Naomi King