JESSE WILLIAMS

Storytelling is based on the word, being an honorable person of integrity is based on your word.

There's so much material out there that's unnecessarily racist. It takes a shot at what is 'urban' or demonstrates blackness with some sassy, neck-jiving character that's not even relevant to the plot. I see it time and time again, and it doesn't move the story forward. It just kind of cryogenically freezes us in this old racial paradigm.

We often grow up being told that we can do this or that, but if you don't see anybody that looks like you doing it, you don't believe you can do it. But I had great teachers, and I wanted to be a great teacher.

I thought that if acting didn't work out, I'd have done law school or medical school: probably law to be honest.

Storybooks were always a big part of my imagination, and my childhood and adolescence.

We should all have the opportunity to at least get a basic education and feel that you are worthy of something in life.

I'm kind of in a middle space, being marketed as a biracial actor. Roles are written either stereotypically black, or they're written 'normal,' which is just code for white.

It was very important to me to be with a woman who is better than me at some things. You want someone who brings new, interesting things into your life.

That's why the role that I have on 'Grey's Anatomy' is important to me, because it's a human being. He doesn't have to wear race on his sleeve; he doesn't even have to talk about it. We just lead by our actions.

You have to be up-front from the very beginning about what your expectations of the other person are, and you can't make any promises you don't intend to keep.

I'm always trying to find the next comedian that just gives me something a little funny to combine with all of the depressing news that I'm processing.

I'm very grateful and fully aware that 90 percent of actors are not working. Going from public school teacher to a show like 'Grey's Anatomy', I love what I do.

Coming from New York, you're kind of indoctrinated with anti-L.A. sentiment, but California is just a really dope state.

I'm an athletic junkie - I play in all the celebrity all-star games, and I've become buddies with a bunch of athletes.

Staying true to our goals, Question Bridge as a company and as a project is not singularly about black males. One of the things I'm so excited about Question Bridge is that my vision goes far beyond black males.

I always find that really interesting, you know, when I get to see characters that I love in TV and film and theater around their family.

I download, like, forty songs a day, I'm a big music collector and a big record collector.

I like to take credit for the work that I have done.

As an actor, you want to be able to move your character forward into new ground, but also it's really interesting to go backwards and unpeel those layers and the interesting elements of what your character is and what informs the decisions that you make so that you can have as much meat to work with.

The interesting thing about white power and the desperate white knuckling grip on this thing call whiteness, which is a myth in itself, is that black folks... we're not asking you to invent new laws for us. We're asking you to include us in the laws that are already on the books.

I grew up in a really horrible school system, but my parents did not let that define how we function. They gave me more work at home from them than I ever got from school. To learn about the history of myself and my people, and that armors me.

We as men, in particular black men, are constantly supported, nurtured, forgiven, apologized for, led, followed and coddled by black women, and they get very little in return.

The truth we are teaching is that every contribution in the history of the planet came from blonde people. It's not true, and it's destructive, and people are getting killed long term as a result. People don't believe that we deserve it.

If someone says, 'Democracy is a sham, those people don't speak for me... the system's rigged,' you say, 'Vote.' Someone says, 'I was making a statement by not voting,' and then you say, 'Well I can't hear it.'

I don't check for Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly or any of these demons on the Right. They don't wake me up in the morning. I don't care about them, and they certainly don't drive the conversations I'm thinking about, but they do have an audience, and they do lie all day, every day about disenfranchised people.