Viola Davis > Quotes

“My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don’t have to live in the past. I found that not only did I have fight in me, I had love.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“I now understand that life, and living it, is more about being present. I’m now aware that the not-so-happy memories lie in wait; but the hope and the joy also lie in wait.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“May you live long enough to know why you were born.” —CHEROKEE BIRTH BLESSING”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“I knew my life would be a fight, and I realized this: I had it in me.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?’” What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through this life without scars.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Everything had been hard for me. I mastered hard. Now, I wanted joy.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
― Viola Davis

“May you live long enough to know why you were born.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Taking off the wig in HTGAWM was my duty to honor Black women by not showing an image that is palatable to the oppressor, to people who have tarnished, punished the image of Black womanhood for so long. It said all of who we are is beautiful. Even our imperfections.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“When you’re poor, you live in an alternate reality. It’s not that we have problems different from everyone else, but we don’t have the resources to mask them. We’ve been stripped clean of social protocol.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“As soon as he came into my life, my life got better because I created a family with him, with someone who loved me. I was no longer solely defined by the family that raised me and my childhood memories.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“There is no way out. Every painful memory, every mentor, every foe served as a chisel. A led path that has shaped me. Me. The imperfect but blessed sculpture Viola that still being chiseled.
My elixir: I am no longer ashamed of myself. I own everything that happened to me.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“learned the hard way that when there are underlying issues, money does nothing. In fact, money exacerbates the problem because it takes away the individual’s ability to be held accountable.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye says that “a person’s love is only as good as the person; a stupid person loves stupidly, a violent man loves violently.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“I’m no longer ashamed of me. I own everything that has ever happened to me. The parts that were a source of shame are actually my warrior fuel. I see people—the way they walk, talk, laugh, and grieve, and their silence—in a way that is hyperfocused because of my past. I’m an artist because there’s no separation from me and every human being that has passed through the world including my mom.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“I don’t have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn’t love me has to say about me.”
― Viola Davis

“Your only job as an artist is to put the truth out there into the world.”
― Viola Davis

“It is a widely held belief that dark-skinned women just don't do it for a lot of Black men. It's a mentality rooted in both racism and misogyny, that you have no value as a woman if you do not turn them on, if you are not desirable to them. It's ingrained thinking, dictated by oppression.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Courage is the cure.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“had no understanding that there would be hard times and then joy would come, or sometimes the shoe would fall, but failing wasn’t permanent. None of that emotionally healthy thinking was instilled in me. I only understood secrets, suppression, succeeding at all costs, overachieving. You make it or you don’t. You either sink or you swim.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“I could create my own family and I could create it intentionally with what I had learned.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Show me the hero. Show me the tragedy.
Heroes always cause their own downfalls. I didn't want to be a hero.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“There was an expectation of perfectionism without the knowledge of emotional well-being.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“When my dad passed, part of my heart went with him that’s never coming back. I feel the same way about Julius. I feel the same way about my child, my mom, sisters. It’s one heart. They are completely entwined in my spirit.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“Remember the love. . . . Don’t play the pain and betrayal, play the woman fighting hard to restore the love.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“That’s what he asked me next. It was a big moment for me. I said, “No, but I’m doing the work. I’m in therapy. I’ve gotta clean things up before I can invite anyone into my life to love me.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me