Chadwick Boseman

“People don't want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it's different.”

“I watched movies, obviously, just like anybody else, but there was nothing to make me think, 'I'm going to go to L.A. and become a movie star,' or anything like that.”

“I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.”

“Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.”

“A superhero movie is only as great as its villains.”

“I got scars from every film I've done, every TV show.”

“It was a big thing for me to read black writers. 'Fences,' by August Wilson. James Baldwin's 'Amen Corner.' 'The Fire Next Time.' 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' of course.”

“When I met Rachel Robinson for the first time, she is a regal woman, and she was like a grandmother in that first meeting.”

“I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.”

“I'm not really interested in being a superhero. That's not a box I've been trying to check off.”

“When it comes down to it, I'd rather have an action figure than a Golden Globe.”

“There are some stories I want to tell that I think it'd be cool to see an African-American dude do.”

“As soon as I came to L.A., things immediately shifted for me. I was now actually here with the people who were making the decisions; I wasn't out in New York sending in tapes to L.A.”

“I thought I would draw or paint or be an architect. I was always drawing portraits. My mom put me in art classes in the summer.”

“Colonialism is the cousin of slavery.”

“I would love to have an ocean of love right now. That said, the number-one rule of acting is, 'Do not seek approval from the audience.' People don't realize that. You can't do stuff to get applause. You have to live in the truth.”

“You have to cherish things in a different way when you know the clock is ticking, you are under pressure.”

“I'm not afraid to work.”

“As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.”

“The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people.”