Lupita Nyong'o Quotes

You can't eat beauty, it doesn't sustain you.

What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty inflamed the heart and merchants the soul.

You fail, and then what? Life goes on. It's only when you risk failure that you discover things.

What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion: for yourself and for those around you.

There is no shame in black beauty.

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

I think it's a real gift to be faced with man's potential for extreme cruelty but also man's resilience and the fact that love really does conquer everything. It's the only answer to these kinds of atrocities and it's not a passive thing.

I've worked hard to feel beautiful in my natural skin.

Personally, I don't ever want to depend on makeup to feel beautiful.

Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It keeps us honest.

That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.

I feel privileged that people are looking up to me and perhaps a dream will be born because of my presence.

You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you.

And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned.

I come from a loving, supportive family, and my mother taught me that there are more valuable ways to achieve beauty than just through your external features. She was focused on compassion and respect, and those are the things that ended up translating to me as beauty.

It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's.

Being called gorgeous is not a bad thing! But at the same time, I don’t want to thrive on people’s opinions of me.

You win an Oscar, and immediately people ask how you feel.

So you don't have time to actually feel anything because you have to generate a response. And then some of the feelings you have are so intimate and visceral, words don't really do them justice.

European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world - the idea that darker skin is not beautiful, that light skin is the key to success and love. Africa is no exception.

It's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.

[My mother] always said I was beautiful and I finally believed her at some point.

I've always had that going on: "I can't," and then I do, so the voice says, "Well, that was an exception!" It's a tug-of-war between two voices: the one who knows she can and the one who's scared she can't.

I love color. I'm enjoying trying all different shades. Makeup isn't something I've worn a lot of in my life.

Beautiful people have many advantages, but so do friendly people.

As human beings, it is our nature to dream about the future, but there is no future without a healthy nature. It's the common denominator that we all depend on, not just to live but to be happy. That's why we owe it to each other to make sure nature stays healthy.

What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.

I dress according to how I feel.

Growing up in Kenya, slum life was not far away.

I had family that lived in slums, so I visited them often, and so I've seen and interacted with abject poverty. But I also know that because of that, poverty is not the definition of the people that live there.

You have to allow for the impossible to be possible.

We don't get to pick the genes we want. There's room in this world for beauty to be diverse.

I had this vivid image of myself at the age of 60 looking back on my life and truly regretting the fact that I hadn't tried to be an actor

On a very practical level, I've learned the importance of circulation socks for planes. I had this awful experience of getting off a flight to go to an event and my feet had swelled. Try getting into heels then! So you put on the socks for the flight, then you can wear whatever heels you want.

Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me.

I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV.

I went to an all-boys high school, and they accepted girls in only the two A.

P. classes. They had these archaic rules: for example, girls couldn't wear makeup. I found it so outrageous that an all-boys school could tell girls to not wear makeup! So I went on a campaign. I got a petition signed and everything. If a girl wants to wear makeup to boost confidence, why not?

I loved duping my parents; I liked manipulating them. It was a way for me to stand out. It was fun.

Even in my dreams of being an actor, my dream was not in the celebrity.

My dream was in the work that I wanted to do.

With success comes more responsibility, a larger size of existence, which is uncomfortable.

I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying we don't have work for black women. But right now I don't know what's next. I hope that there are more opportunities to come my way.

I think beauty is an expression of love.

Happiness is the most important thing.

The first time I cut all my hair off was when I was 19.

I just got fed up going to the salon every week. I'd had enough! On a whim, it was off. It's low-maintenance.

Everyone said, ‘Brace yourself, Lupita! Keep a granola bar in that clutch of yours!’ I didn’t really understand what they meant, and it was only once it was past that I realized that my body had been holding on by a thread to get through this very intense experience. Nothing can prepare you for awards season. The red carpet feels like a war zone, except you cannot fly or fight; you just have to stand there and take it.

I like people who don't tell you what you want to hear.

In the madness, you have to find calm.

Oprah played a big role in my understanding of what it meant to be female and to really step into your own power. I wouldn't even call her a role model; she was literally a reference point. You have the dictionary, you have the Bible, you have Oprah.

Every time I overcome an obstacle, it feels like success.

Sometimes the biggest ones are in our head - the saboteurs that tell us we can't.

To be human is to seek perfection, and find joy in never attaining it.

I come from a loving, supportive family, and my mother taught me that there are more valuable ways to achieve beauty than just through your external features. She was focused on compassion and respect, and those are the things that ended up translating to me as beauty. Beautiful people have many advantages, but so do friendly people.... I think beauty is an expression of love.

I feel a responsibility to myself and my parents and the people whose love has gotten me this far - people who were in my life before fame. That's where I get my sense of self. It's deadly for anyone to take on that role of a deity; it's not sustainable. I've got tons of flaws. Call my mother - she'll tell you! She keeps it real. Sometimes you don't want to hear the truth; she'll tell it to you out of love.

I haven't yet figured out how to be a celebrity;

that's something I'm learning, and I wish there were a course on how to handle it. I have to be aware that my kinesphere may be larger than I want it to be.

Human beings have an instinct for freedom.