KATORI HALL

In order to be great, you just have to care. You have to care about your world, community, and equality.

Cultivating relationships with people who've achieved what you want to achieve makes the path fuller and more fun.

I feel the feminist movement has excluded black women. You cannot talk about being black and a woman within traditional feminist dialogue.

Don't let others put thoughts into your mind that takes away your self-confidence.

Sometimes, unfortunately, hatred is more powerful than progress.

I feel a responsibility to continue creating complex roles for black women, especially young black women.

I grew up playing with kids from Hurt Village, playing with kids from other housing projects, Lamar Terrace, because my grandmother lived in that particular area. So, I always wondered how I would have turned out if I would have lived in that particular given circumstance.

Become your dream, and not be told what you are supposed to do.

As a black woman who grows up in a predominantly white neighborhood, you learn how to perform a 'good' version of yourself. And then when you're with your home girls, you're saying all kinds of stuff that sounds all kinds of crazy, but you understand each other because you're speaking the way that you're comfortable with.

I have so many different voices and stories to tell.

I always crave to see more stories about and by people of color, particularly new work by young black writers.

'Hurt Village' is based on a real housing project in Memphis, about three minutes away from the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was assassinated, so in my work I'm focusing on a very specific area in Memphis. I see 'Hurt Village' as a natural extension of 'The Mountaintop.'

Through school, I saw plenty of theatre my parents weren't necessarily up on. They would prefer a football game to watching 'The Nutcracker,' and that's fine. I enjoy both.

Playwrights are the most gregarious writers - to get our work done, we need actors, directors, set designers.

Serendipity always rewards the prepared.

Theatre is an exclusive place that tends to be dominated by white men, or dying white men.

Follow your intuition, listening to your dreams, your inner voice to guide you.

I always felt like Broadway was not for me - in terms of ticket price, in terms of what was on there. I never saw myself reflected in the mirror of the Great White Way.

I'm very Southern in the way I walk in the world. I love to laugh. I love to eat. I love to hug people. But if somebody makes me mad, my neck may roll. I can be aggressive with a Southern twang.

I'm very opinionated, very intelligent and not afraid to show that.

I started writing because I got so frustrated that there weren't enough plays that had roles for young black women in them.

Unlike films, which can be easily disseminated worldwide via DVDs and the Internet, plays struggle to find an international audience.

I used to think people above me might get jealous because I wanted to do what they did. But no, people are much nicer than that.

It is expensive to give plays subtitles, especially for a short run, so most new dramas rarely cross the transcontinental bridge.

I'll never be August Wilson - but what I can be is more of myself.