David Alan Grier

“Don't let anyone try to tell you who you are. Define yourself.”

“As I get older, my sense of humor is my biggest asset.”

“My father contracted polio on a troop train in Korea.”

“To be known by the public, honestly. People come up and tell them how good I make them feel.”

“'Dancing With the Stars' is so Middle America, and people take it so seriously.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to walk with my dad's limp - my dad was my hero - but that infuriated him, and he would make me walk back and forth in the living room until I walked without it.”

“I couldn't wait to be, you know, a Black Panther. Of course they wouldn't let me join.”

“My grandmother was born in 1900, and she would regale me with tales I call 'Little House on the Prairie' tales, but they were tales of segregated and racist America growing up in Alabama and Mississippi, where she came from.”

“I, myself, identify myself as a heathen.”

“I started acting at the University of Michigan in my sophomore year.”

“I had done the sitcom thing to lesser and lesser degrees of success.”

“I wanted to be a leading man - the black lawyer, the black doctor, the black policeman.”

“Be talented enough to make it and stupid enough to keep trying.”

“I decided sitcoms weren't for me.”

“I've tried actively to define myself and redefine myself, and not be pigeonholed.”

“My father was a doctor.”

“I want to see gay couples stuck with their significant other at Home Depot with that far away look in their eye, get me out of here.”

“Some days I think I look kind of cute, but other days I try to avoid the mirror.”

“I grew up in a home and in a world in which you can do anything. We were all expected to go to college. My father was a doctor.”

“I try to make my bed every day for mental health. Coming home to an unmade bed or a room with clothes all over will depress me.”