"Back in the day when I started - it's like I walked five miles to school in the snow barefooted" - there were three channels.I don't know what I would do.
Books showed me there were possibilities in life, that there were actually people like me living in a world I could not only aspire to but attain. Reading gave me hope. For me, it was the open door.
I don't think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.
I believe I'm just getting started. The TV show is just the foundation.... If you're open to the possibilities, your life gets grander, bigger, bolder!
There is a seeded bread that I bring from South Africa. I bring home 10, 20 loaves. I am so bad with this bread. I've literally been in hotels and brought my own: "Please, can you toast this? I have my own bread." They're like, "You have your own bread?" And I'll pull it out!
No matter who you are, no matter what your culture is, it is absolutely possible to look out and extend yourself in such a way, that you can connect to other people and find that we are more alike than we are different.
I interviewed - no - had lunch with Harper Lee several years ago, trying to convince Harper Lee to do "To Kill a Mockingbird" for the book club. She wouldn't do it. She said, "Honey, I said everything I wanted to say."
I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools (in America) that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.
I was in the gym working on my triceps, and I was thinking, just as I did the 50-pound pulldown, I am going to be in better shape by the end of the year [2016] than I've ever been in my life. I really just smiled at the notion: Wow, what a thing.