Joe Morton

“I always feel like I'm running an hour and a half late.”

“I think that's what good writing is all about. You go into a genre to talk about other things. Tolkein created a whole world to talk about the world he lived in.”

“Even if you have something that you can contribute to society, very often society doesn't view you that way. Because when you are The Other, the first response by the mainstream, if you will, is to ostracize.”

“I've played good guys for most of my career, and when I came out to California, I thought, 'I really would like to find some wonderfully intelligent bad guy to play.'”

“I've never liked much of reality television, mostly because it involves humiliation.”

“Hollywood has successfully produced many films framed by anti-racist or pro-integrationist story lines. I'm going to guess that since 'Gone With The Wind,' Hollywood realized films about racism and segregation pull at the heartstrings of everyone and hopefully serve to purge a sense of guilt.”

“I didn't play basketball because I'd learned how to ice skate.”

“I actually went to the university as a psychology major, and at orientation, they took us around the campus and took us to the theater for a skit. At the end of the skit, I literally could not get up out of my seat.”

“'Turn Me Loose' was Off-Broadway, and now we are making a concerted effort to figure out how to get it to on Broadway.”

“I think it's true for all of us, if you find yourself doing really well at something, then the pressure is on you to try to improve.”

“I suppose I prefer kind of epic dramas like, oh, I don't know... 'Lawrence Of Arabia' or 'Apocalypse Now'; those are the movies that I have a tendency to be most fond of.”

“I know who Dick Gregory is; I knew what his accomplishments are. I certainly knew him as a comedian and an activist.”

“Everyone does what they believe they need to do in order to survive in this business, 'survive' being the operative word.”

“If you can keep a character fresh and alive for, let's say, six months, working eight nights a week, then you can do anything. You have honed your technique and your skills to such a degree by that point that you are ready to take on all kinds of challenges.”

“When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.”

“In the 1980s, there was no category to stick me in. 'He sounds too smart' is what I was hearing. I realized that I had to become a member of the school of what I call 'ugly acting.' Which meant I wanted to do what Dustin Hoffman did very successfully: to play character roles, but lead character roles.”

“When we were bringing 'Raisin' onto Broadway, our first stop was at Arena in D.C. Several things struck me about being in D.C.: One was the enormous poverty around the capital at that time - it was 1973, '74 - and I was stunned by people literally living in poverty, with holes in their houses and other things.”

“In most science-fiction pictures, the black guy is either an engineer or a radio operator, and he is the first guy killed - gone from the movie.”

“The more you know about the world, the more resources you have in terms of things that can inform your character or the circumstances that surround your character.”

“Acting-wise, it's always exciting to come back for a third season of any TV show that you're working on.”