Aisha Tyler

I feel if you believe in equality, you have to believe in it for everybody. And that's the way I've always lived my life.

The only concept or experience or core belief that I can attribute my other-ness to is that I just started out a weirdo and I stayed a weirdo. And it took me a long time to embrace my outsidership and see it as a strength rather than a weakness.

For a little while, my mom was a school teacher. And I went to the school that she taught.

People challenge my nerd cred all the time. I just show them the photo of me winning my middle-school science fair, wearing my Casio calculator watch and eyeglasses so big they look like they can see the future.

My parents were vegetarians. I'd show up at school, this giant black kid, with none of the cool clothes and a tofu sandwich and celery sticks.

Success is not the absence of failure it's the persistence through failure.

I visualize myself winning the Olympic Pentathlon, inventing a phone that can be controlled by brain waves, or doing the laundry. I do not actually DO these things, but I see myself doing them, and that is almost MORE satisfying, because I am also lying down.