Yolanda King

“I will never grow up. Everyone wants to tell me how to live my life.”

“Given my belief that there is a divine purpose for my father's life on this planet, given the way I was raised, it's real hard to get angry. I get that from my daddy.”

“Through the arts, you can impact upon people's attitudes, values, and understandings.”

“As an artist and as a Black woman coming out of a background that emphasizes service, there are certain responsibilities that I must assume. I see these responsibilities not as a burden, but as an extension of what I am.”

“What just resonates with me so strongly is my whole spirituality and the fact that we are, my belief that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

“My father was bigger than life, an entity and everyone expected us, as his offspring, to be saintettes, these little carbon copies.”

“As soon as people heard me speak, they would compare me to my father. My siblings had the same kind of pressure.”

“To really involve yourself in transforming yourself. That's the work that I'm really focused on through my company, Higher Ground Productions, is really helping people to really find a place of personal empowerment as well as inner peace.”

“My friends... feel there are not that many people they can really look up to. They feel people are so hypocritical and fake... But I do have some people I respect, a great number of people, and I'm sure my friends have.”

“Black youth, in general, have no understanding of our past. Young black people who don't know who Martin Luther King Jr. was, don't know nothin'.”

“Within the theater lies the power to stimulate and alter the hearts and minds of both the privileged and those who have too long been denied.”

“I feel that I'm very much in touch with my father's spirit and presence. I feel it, sense it and take much energy and inspiration from that.”

“I struggled with a lot of the legacy for a long time, probably actually into my 30s before I really made peace with it.”

“I tease sometimes and say that the King holiday is a 20th-century miracle. Reagan even signed it, and he was completely opposed to the idea.”

“When you say 'the man of the house,' the black woman has been the woman and the man of the house, because black men have so often had to spend all of their time and energy working and trying, at least, to give their families the basic needs. So black women, I find, are not really concerned about women's liberation.”

“I am an artist with very strong social and political concerns.”

“I was watching the news that day when the bulletin came on that my father had been shot. I prayed. I asked God, 'Please don't let my daddy die.'”

“By the time I was 12, I had decided to be an artist.”

“Do you know what I think of when I remember him? I think: He was such a kid. He taught me how to swim when I was 4 and how to ride a bike. So when I think of Martin Luther King, I think of laughter. I think of the play and the fun.”

“My father was not really pleased when I told him of my choice to train as an actress, when he was with us in this dimension.”