James Avery Quotations

You can either be a movie star or an actor. I'm an actor.

What you find in the theatre is that if you're good, no matter what color you are, the audience will buy that - whoever you are.

On one show before a live audience, I had to look out the door and call for Will Smith to come in. The audience couldn't see him, but there he was with his naked butt staring me in the face. I didn't normally hang out with twenty-something practical jokers, so sometimes he was a little much.

You are only an actor if you absolutely love it and can not do anything else. Starving for your art is great in your 20s, but it's not so great at 35. It has to be absolute love. You can't worry about being a movie star or anything else. Just love. That's it.

Doing Shakespeare certainly makes you a better actor.

They told us we would not be welcome.

When I picked up those little girls that drowned, all I could think about was my grandbabies.

There are too many African-Americans with too much money for us to have to go to anybody else for anything in terms of schools, in terms of scholarships, in terms of entrepreneurship, in terms of moving us along as a group to that place where we should be as a people.

Writing is such a singular and lonely occupation. And it's interesting; all of the work that you create is so singular.

I have wandered many roads that I have never traveled; touched many things that my eyes have never seen. It is through stories that life is made, and through stories that life is saved.