YouSaid · the spoken record

Cicely Tyson

lines on the record: 42
first: 2021-02-10
most recent: 2021-02-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“What makes me happy? I live on the seventeenth floor of a building overlooking Central Park. Interesting. When I was a little girl growing up, My mother, who never allowed us to go out and play with other children. But after we finish our dinner and our chores, she would take us to Central Park and we'd sit outside at the park on these benches. And I used to sit there and look at these buildings, these high rises, and wonder who lived in those buildings and why we didn't live there. And for the last thirty some odd years, I have lived in that building. And so when I wake up in the morning and I... Look at the sky. And the stars and the moon. And that I look at the earth and the fullness therein, I wonder what is man that thou art so mindful of him. That's right.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you put it in that context, I think it takes God out of the realm. Being for me. Being human. Of being a person And we deal with humanity. And we relate to each other. In loving ways. As human beings. And so I don't know that I would put it in that context. I know that we are taught that it is and at times we experience certain emotions in our being that we attribute to love. What is that love? I don't know Know when I feel a certain Warm the closeness of a desire to give of myself to another human being Is that what it is I don't know. I'm constantly questioning myself about that.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are so many definitions given that word it is bandied about more than any other word I think in the English language. And I don't know that many of us know what it actually means. God so loved the world that he gave his only reason. Okay. That's as close as I get to it.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I came pretty close to doing it one time because I wanted desperately to work with this director. And he came to Hollywood and he was going to do this movie. He sent me the script. I took it home. I opened it, I started to read it. And the more I read it, the sicker I became. And so I called him and I said, I can't do it. I can't do it. He came to the house. Let's talk about it. Which we did. And so I said, okay, I'll try again. I sat up that whole night. I read the entire script onto a tape. And then I played it back the next morning Can't That was it. It just made me sick to my stomach. And the thought, see, you know, if you do a play, you do it, it's over. But the thought of doing something like this and leaving it on. Screen. Forever. Okay, that's not what I want to live.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would own your house But I made the decision that. When I read a script, either my skin tingled or my stomach churned. When my skin tingled I knew I had to do it. My stomach churned. I knew I couldn't do it. I knew that whatever monetary gain there was would end up in a psychiatrist's hand. I could not live with myself having done certain things that I found were demeaning to me as a woman first and to the race of people.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely not. It was all in the process of my developing as a human being and making my characters real. And true to their being.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So finally, the director walks over to me and he said, Cicely, you cut your hair. And I said, I didn't say anything, I just shipped my head. Said, you know, I wanted to ask you to do it, but I didn't have the nerve. That was it”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I walked into his barbershop and I said to this gentleman who approached me, I said, I want you to cut my hair, you know, just cut it now. So he sat me down, put this mark around me, and he started cutting and he cut it down to about. And so he said, how does that look to you? Does that make you happy? And I said, no, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. I want you to shave it all off. Shave it as close to my head as you can possibly get it and then wash it so that it goes back to its natural state. The man went and sat down Said to me, Are you sure that's what you want? And I said, Yes, that's exactly what I want. So he said, Okay, the next morning I get on a set, I have it tied up, okay? Do the makeup and the costume, and the director says, Okay, we're ready. I take this off.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, it was done, it was entitled between yesterday and today. Now it was done live. It was a television morning show, Sunday morning show. And so that night before, I was so unhappy about the fact that my hair was straightened and long. And I went up to Harle And I walked into the Shalomar barber shop. Duke Ellington's barbershop.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This came about as a result of the movie. See, everything that I did had to do with a character that I was playing. This was a movie entitled Between Yesterday and Today, and it was about a couple who, during the transition of Africa, The more a Western world. My husband wanted to change. I did not want. I wanted to stay with the old culture and the old customs.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh absolutely crucified me for doing that. I was told that I was in a position to uplift the image of the black woman and I was absolutely destroying it by wearing my hair in the natural. The interesting thing is that I was doing a Sunday morning television show that was”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. Because, whoa, it's like the young lady said to me, well, I don't know them. I never went to school with them. I didn't live in the same neighborhood and so on and so forth. So there was no need. Know who I Okay, but there was a need for us to know who they were in order to protect ourselves. I think that's where the... Important for you to know people in order for you to understand. to have any kind of relationship with them. How else? Do you get to have a unity among people if you don't do that?”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that we, in order to survive in this society, have had to learn them. They have never had to learn us. And I think that's where the ball was dropped. We had to learn them in order to survive.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“innocence it's hard to believe but it's true yeah it's very difficult to believe I mean I sometimes think you know you can't live in this society and not be aware unless you are completely shut off You can't”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I cannot accept that. You can't live in this society during the civil rights era and not know what's going on. With a race of people. Sorry.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she said, well. No, no, no, you know, I don't know them. I never lived among them. I never went to school with them. I didn't them. Talking to And she said, Sorry, your guilt lies in your innocence, I said to her.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Primarily because I was doing an interview in Philadelphia. It was a press conference, and this journalist stood up and admitted that he discovered a bit of bigotry in himself while viewing Sound And that came about because Kevin Hooks, who played my oldest son, referred to his father as daddy. And so I asked him whether or not he had any children. He said yes, I have two sons. What did they call you? Daddy, he said. He could not equate the fact that this little black boy was calling this black man Daddy as his son did him. I thought to myself, my God. I can't believe that I had that. I was doing an interview in Los Angeles and this young lady said to me. Hard for me to believe that Existed between black men and women, the lives of which you exhibited in Sounder. I said, Do you realize what you say? Saying that we're not human beings.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that is what buoyed me. You never know where your source of energy is going to come from. You just don't. And believe me, she was my source of energy. And I realized that after she was gone because it was so difficult for me to get it together.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At all the adversity that existed between us, primarily because my dad. I look just like him every time she looked at me, she saw him, and so I became. But. What the adversity that existed between the two of us. And I say that I don't think she left here without realizing that she, in fact, is responsible for what I have become. Because that's what I Relationship fighting to get and she was fighting to protect me. I was fighting for my”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go backstage with makeup and hair and costume, I come out my mother is standing at the door accepting congratulatory remarks. Yes, I always know ever since she was a little girl, you know, she liked to sing and dance. I knew one day, this is the woman who told me that I could not live in her house if that's the life I wanted to live. After that, She became a little bit more tolerant of my being in the business. Then when Sounder I invited her to the opening. I'm sitting here. She's sitting behind me. She's tapping me on the shoulder to say, Ed Sullivan is sitting behind me. She loved Ed Sullivan. I said, Ed Sullivan, I'm sitting in here. But you know, what I realized, and this is what I mean when you can take lemons and make lemonade. We had a very, very difficult time. My mother and I. And I learned”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was produced by my then teacher. Her name was Vinette Carroll, and she was directing a play, Dark of the Moon was the name of it. And so I decided I would ask my mother to come and see So she agreed. I put her in the center. The third row because I wanted to know where she would be so that I would avoid that area. So that's where I put it. From the moment I walked onto the stage. What's she got on there? She started talking I mean, she's talking to her neighbor, but she thinks she's whispering and the whole theater is hearing this woman comment on every move I made. On the stage. Okay All right, I got through that.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were not children that went to the movies. Never went to the movies as a child. In fact, that I'm in the business is a source of amazement not only to my family and friends, but to myself because we were not children that did our chores on Saturday and rewarded by going to school. So I didn't sit there oggling over this. Character on the screen say, I want to be that never. But she felt very strongly about that. She told me that, as I said earlier, that I couldn't live in her house and do that. I moved, I found a girlfriend who was my size, wore the same size clothes, had an apartment, had a job so that when I had to go out on interviews, I could borrow a dress or I had some places to sleep and so on. Then two years later I did. Play at the why, and that's the first time I ever stepped on a stage.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, my mother just felt very strongly that I was going to live in a den of iniquity. Know what that means, right? I do know. All mothers think that”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A negative experience, which you think will bring you to your knees. And it doesn't And you survived that. You're that much stronger, you're richer, your solar. You have more. In touch with what God wants you to be in touch.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. I really relish and treasure them more than positive because if I have been able to survive. and reach another level. That has given me more growth, more strength, more confidence. Has enriched my life more. And that's why I treasure the law. I never think of what people perceive as being negative, as negative at all. To me, it's the most positive.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything Believe me, I say. I think that I have profited more from the negative as opposed to the positive. Yes, because”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, I mean, I think... I don't think my life is so meaningful in the sense that I have to walk around talking about it Every time Dick and Harriet, it isn't. It's the life that I've lived in every I am, in fact, the sum total of my whole life's experience.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, people ask why. I've always been so private, you know, that I don't discuss my personal life. I mean, And I remember being asked that by an interviewer, and I said, Because it's my personal life that allows me to give you what I do. It's what's in eight in me. A That allows me to give a role what it should have. To make it live.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I went through a terrible time. But she said when I was six months old, she was pushing me in a carriage and a woman stopped her and said, take care of that child. She has a sixth sense. She is going to make you very proud one day and she's going to take care of you in your old age. I had forgotten all about it, and when I lost her, I just could not adjust. I felt for the first time I understood what people who are amputees. Mean when they say even though the limb is God, you feel as though it's still there. And that's how I felt. I felt that it was gone. My right arm was gone, and yet it was there, you know?”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“walked out of the house six feet from her door, and she dropped just as I had dreamt it, and she had her rifle. So, I'm the kind of person who, when I get these kinds of things. I don't ignore them. it is a message to me.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother had it too, and she just passed it on. So I told her the dream. She Well, you know, I mean, I haven't gotten any news. I guess everything is all right. So I was still tortured by the fact that I could not get on that plane that night until I found out what the message was. And so I went home and I started getting things together and the phone rang. It was my sister I said, How are you? She said, not good. Mother just passed. My mother walked out that morning. She called my sister in law and said, Bernice, I'm going home to my mother. And Bernie said, Oh, mother, don't talk like that. I don't like to hear you say things like, why don't you wait until sister come? All my family members come. She said, okay, I'll wait. She did not know. That I was on the east coast. I didn't call to tell her. She got dressed in her Sunday best.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because her desk was quite unexpected. Yet. I was on a plane, the red eye, I was going to New York. To gather up some formal awareness. Join the dance theater Hollum, who was being honored by Queen Elizabeth. And so on that plane, I had this dream. I That I fell in a street and I had my right hand extended for help. I got to New York, I said to my assistant Susan at the time, I said, Susan, something's going on, something's happening. Somebody's trying to get a message to me, okay? And she said, What do you mean? I said, because I told her the dream.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years of your life? No. But it stayed with me. And I tell you, I could see her face as clearly as if she was sitting next to me. That's what an impact it made on me. Yeah.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and so they had a little party, and they gave her a gold watch. And I I want to buy my own gold watch. I am not going to be any place for 30 years and have them hand me a gold watch.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes, misses Johnson, can you imagine I remember her name? I can tell you exactly the way that woman looked and everything she had on that day. Her desk was next to mine. And she had been there for 30 years.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just pushed myself away from the desk. And I said, I know that God didn't put me on the face of this earth to bang on a typewriter for the rest of my life. I know there must be something else for me to do. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to find it. And then I pulled myself back up and proceeded to finish whatever. I know it's just quiet on I looked up. They're all looking at I had lost my mind, and I suppose for a moment or so I did, but I knew that there was something else for me to do.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I sure did. Is that true? Yes, I did. That's That's true, sure. I love that. Yes. I was sitting there typing my, I was working for the American Red Cross, and I worked for the vice president of the organization plus the psychiatrist who came in to deal with the problems of some people. And this woman sat there, who was a client and talked about the fact that she had a daughter who was eight years old and that her husband was molesting the daughter and she was afraid to tell anyone because she didn't want him to lose his job. Well, when she was finished, I sat there typing up the case history. And I thought This is not for me.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. It made life as a black woman more meaningful to me to be able to say to a generation after generation after generation, this is where you come from.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, you know, it's so important for us to understand who we are, where we came from. That I had Privilege of being the mother.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, well, when I was giving birth to Kinta, I I don't even remember I was taken over, consumed by something. I don't even remember. What I do remember was that I felt a fire on my back and I didn't know where that was coming from. And it turned out I found out after that it was cold. And they had these big lamps. To give warmth to those hats. And that was burning my back. And I am allergic to heat, the sun. And when I was finished, my whole back was swollen from the heat.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew that. I felt it because I learned things in the reading of the script that I did not know before. And so I knew that I, as well as whoever viewed it, was in for a real education in terms of who we were.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew that I was as well as millions of others would be introduced to ourselves in a way we had never been introduced to ourselves before in terms of who we were, what we were, and why we were on this planet. I knew that.”
2021-02-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Cicely Tyson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source