Lupita Nyong'o

You can't rely on how you look to sustain you, what sustains us, what is fundamentally beautiful is compassion; for yourself and for those around you.

It's so funny, you go to acting school thinking you're going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.

I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.

My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico.

I grew up in the limelight and being the child of someone famous. So my relationship with fame is not bedazzled.

It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.

I never, in my wildest dreams, could I have thought that the first role I get out of school would lead to an Oscar nomination.