Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms.
Sterling K. Brown
Always have an attitude of gratitude.
Sterling K. Brown
It’s the people who don’t recognize the racism within themselves that can be the most damaging because they don’t see it.
Sterling K. Brown
I catch myself every once in a while doing that weird thing that I see famous people do, where they have sunglasses and hats on and grow out beards thinking that they’re fooling people. Dude, you’re not fooling anyone: you look just like you.
Sterling K. Brown
As a kid growing up St. Louis, Missouri, I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. Any time people talked about slavery, it was always something like, ‘If I was a slave, I wouldn’t have been putting up with that. I would have been out in a heartbeat.’ And it’s like, sure, it’s a very easy thing to say.
Sterling K. Brown
I grew up feeling unattractive, and it took a long time to grow into a place where I was comfortable with me.
Sterling K. Brown
In my mind, I’m still this kid from St. Louis, Missouri, that nobody really knows.
Sterling K. Brown
At the highest level of your craft, you don’t have to play games or make people feel small; you can just embrace.
Sterling K. Brown
When I was a young man, I worked at the Boys and Girls Club in St. Louis, Missouri, and another boys club called Matthews-Dickey.
Sterling K. Brown
Life has to be everything. It can’t be all sad. It can’t be all peaches and cream. Because the lows have you appreciate the highs. And the highs give you perspective on the lows. If it’s not everything, it becomes flat or mundane.
Sterling K. Brown
I didn’t grow up feeling very handsome.
Sterling K. Brown
Any great art is meant to illuminate the human condition.
Sterling K. Brown
The prism through which you experience life is so unique. There is no objective experience.
Sterling K. Brown
Don’t become too attached to your own myopia. Just because you’ve found a way to do things doesn’t mean it’s the way to do things. There are so many different ways in which to navigate this so-called life. Be open to experiencing more than one.
Sterling K. Brown
I can’t let other people dictate how I see myself.
Sterling K. Brown
We all have our prejudices, and we may or may not be aware of them. Sometimes people walk by me and give me a wider berth. It happens. I wear hoodies all the time because my head gets cold. Something innocuous can be misunderstood.
Sterling K. Brown
I’m obsessed with how people talk! Accents, dialects… So whenever I go someplace where an accent is extremely distinct – Minneapolis, New Orleans, Jamaica, Vancouver – I always find myself trying to pick up the subtleties of their patterns.
Sterling K. Brown
Muhammad Ali was the greatest of all time. But what made him even greater was what he did outside the ring.
Sterling K. Brown
I have a big family of big people.
Sterling K. Brown
I went to a college prep high school in St. Louis, Missouri. When I graduated from school, I owned this thing called the Headmaster’s Cup, and the Headmaster’s Cup is for the student who exemplifies the spirit of the institution and is recognized by the faculty and administration.
Sterling K. Brown
I just try to do something to sweat at least an hour a day.
Sterling K. Brown
My dad passed away when I was 10.
Sterling K. Brown
I see my friends and family who have a passion or a dream, but it’s now a dream deferred because they were never naive enough or brazen enough to say, ‘Let me do this.’
Sterling K. Brown
I’m always trying to find ways to evolve. Evolution, for me, is a very spiritual thing, getting closer to the creator, closer to God, and becoming a better version of yourself.
Sterling K. Brown
You got to let the people know while they’re here how much they’re appreciated and how much you love them.
Sterling K. Brown
With any character you portray, you can never play the end in the beginning. You have to pursue and attack your intention as if they’re going to be successful.
Sterling K. Brown
I think, for the first time, people are starting to say, ‘That’s Sterling K. Brown,’ which is cool, which is uncharted territory for your boy. It’s nice to be called by your name when you’re not in character.
Sterling K. Brown
It’s a very frightening feeling to feel like you can have a busted taillight or wear a hoodie or be playing in a park, and someone can take your life away. To have two children, two black boys, you ask yourself a lot of questions about how do I protect my family. Is there anything I can actually do?
Sterling K. Brown
You can’t really fake chemistry: either you have it or you don’t, and you can’t have a relationship on screen if you don’t have one off screen. I love Sarah Paulson. I absolutely adore her. My wife has given me full permission to love Sarah Paulson, and I look forward to doing that for the rest of my life.
Sterling K. Brown
There is a reason that many African Americans have a healthy mistrust for law enforcement. We don’t always feel protected or served by that particular institution.
Sterling K. Brown
The biggest compliment that I receive is when other black folks come up to me and say, ‘You changed the way that I thought about Chris Darden.’
Sterling K. Brown
I’ve always told my wife, ‘Anytime I have an opportunity to be on something that I would watch even if I wasn’t on it, that’s when I get really, really giddy.’
Sterling K. Brown
Sarah Paulson is the most prepared and professional actor I’ve had the privilege of working with. I learned so much about preparation and attention to detail and speaking up when something is not right.
Sterling K. Brown
My first series regular was on a TV show called ‘Starved,’ which was so many years ago, and I was the only guy they brought in. So I go in, I read, it goes well. The next day I hear I got the job, and I rejoiced.
Sterling K. Brown
There’s a time when it was an event for a black person to be on television. Where black households would gather around, ‘Oh, you know, Sammy Davis is going to be on ‘All in the Family’ tonight! Let’s go check it out!’ It was a big, big thing.
Sterling K. Brown
I have tremendous respect for Christopher Darden, and I recognize him as an individual of integrity, who did his job to the best of his ability, and I want to tell him thank you. Thank you for enduring hatred from his own community, for being ostracized and called an Uncle Tom and a sellout.
Sterling K. Brown
I was at Stanford University up in the West Coast Bay Area, so the biggest song of my freshman year was ‘I Got 5 on It’ by Luniz, and the ‘I Got 5 on It’ remix was the joint that everybody was jamming constantly. And then it was also at that particular time that I became a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Sterling K. Brown
When I got into Stanford in high school, I had some friends from school who told me that I just got in because I was black and whatnot.
Sterling K. Brown
I went to Target once and picked up three seasons of ’24’ – what I call the Jack Bauer power hour – and watched 72 episodes in ten days.
Sterling K. Brown
I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and now my kids are growing up in Los Angeles, so that’s culturally very different.
Sterling K. Brown
I have gay people in my family who weren’t able to openly discuss homosexuality, and I feel like that’s shifted, especially here on the coast.
Sterling K. Brown
I always thought that I would just be working in obscurity in perpetuity.
Sterling K. Brown
I never assume people are going to recognize me.
Sterling K. Brown
I’ve been able to pay the bills. I’ve been able to pay off my student loans. I was a homeowner before anything happened in the larger public eye.
Sterling K. Brown
I think what Hollywood is learning at large is that there is profitability in stories that are culturally specific and that you can only address the universal through the specific.
Sterling K. Brown
Running gives me the confidence to be at my peak throughout the rest of my day.
Sterling K. Brown
In the gym, people’s enthusiasm tends to get the best of them. They realize this is their opportunity to say hello or that they love my work… It doesn’t matter how profusely you’re sweating.
Sterling K. Brown
I’ve had people come stand in front of the treadmill and wait for me to acknowledge their presence so they can speak.
Sterling K. Brown
The first time I went on a serious run was when I was 21 years old at Stanford University. From 21 to 30, I continued the tradition and ran 10 miles every year on my birthday.
Sterling K. Brown
My family did a lot of road trips across these continental United States when I was a kid. Twenty or so of us would caravan in four or five vehicles and hit every corner of the connected 48.
Sterling K. Brown
The first trip I can remember would have to be to Marianna, Arkansas. My mother’s parents are from there, and we’d go every year to visit the church where they were buried. We’d attend church service that day, put flowers around their tombstones, and visit with family and friends that still lived there.
Sterling K. Brown
Being in a Marvel film is the pinnacle of secrecy training.
Sterling K. Brown