My mom loved road trips, and sometimes we'd drive down to North Carolina. Though my parents were separated, she wanted me to stay connected with my dad.

Yale was one of the best moments in my life - also one of the hardest. I learned about community.

The most important thing I feel in the acting profession is to create a community that reflects you back to you.

What does it serve any studio to not reflect the lives of people who are giving you money, who are crying out to you, 'Hey, please tell our stories.'

I hope that there's a little black boy somewhere in Montana that never thought that he would see a reflection of himself, and he turns on the television, like, 'Oh my God, thank you.'

Really trying to find the people who really ride for you and are down for you, that's hard.

Every time you get in front of the lights and the cameras and you think, 'Okay, well, we've done this before, but we have to do it again? Oh, we're doing it again? We're doing it again?' It's so gratifying, but I don't think I'll ever get used to it. I hope I won't.

TV can be a thread between all of us, and it can be a powerful tool to examine life and love and what we all have in common as humans.

I couldn't believe there was going to be a show called 'Atlanta,' because that's my favorite city in the country. It's where I went to college. I have so many great friends that live there. It's where I discovered that I wanted to be an artist.

I dare somebody to go to Atlanta and not have a good time.

I am the product of those who believed in me.

Atlanta's the hub of black culture, and it's OK to be you there - it's the city that really shaped me to be who I am.

I really love Instagram for the artwork.

The great thing about James Baldwin and his writing is that it's still fresh every time you pick it up. That's also the sad thing about his writing sometimes, too.

I used to draw and do a lot of calligraphy and typography. I'm a big sketcher, too.

I have been the hugest HBO fan since I was 3, watching programming that I had no business watching as a child.

It's not without its flaws - it's still the South and the Bible Belt - but Atlanta is one of those cities that's really good at uniting people.

This is the city that kind of formulated who I am. And, not only that, but to be black in Atlanta is one of the greatest things because you can go anywhere and feel familiar with anyone who's right next to you, from Bankhead to Buckhead.

Atlanta, in itself, is its own living, breathing thing.

At the end of the day, it's incredibly important to have a show like 'Atlanta' because if we can't stand up for and celebrate each other, then who will? Who will do it better?

Every single person you can think of called me Paper Boi.

I usually get approached by older white ladies of a certain class, with their pearls and, you know, their Talbots on and everything, and they're like, 'We just have to say, we know we're not your demographic, but we love Paper Boi; we really love this show, and we love what you're doing.' It's totally cool.

People like to use the word 'naivete' as a negative, but not for me.

The humility keeps me going forward.

You can't share your magic with everyone. Your job is to live within your magic. And if other magical people find you, then let's go and make a brew.

I never really thought about what kind of career I wanted to map out for myself. I just wanted to do work that spoke to my heart. 'Atlanta' definitely did that.

Acting, for me, was kind of a way of survival, honestly. I'm the baby boy out of four different sisters, and I grew up in a house with so many different personalities that acting was the only way to not go to therapy.

I just remember watching my first theater class, and I was like, 'Oh I can get up there,' like I could absolutely get up and do this every day and learn about it.

I think that's the best thing about being black is that we find a way to make our own communities and always give room for people to pull up to our tables. We always provide a way for other people from different walks of life to come into the communities that we have built because we're so used to being excluded.

That's the great thing about being an actor: getting the opportunity to do something that really speaks to you.

I'm a huge pin collector.

'Atlanta' is really trying to put that out there: these are just the lives of these people in this city, and this city is its own breathing, living thing, too. So how do you navigate through life, especially with dreams and aspirations in a world that tells you that you don't deserve to have them.

Just to say 'woke' is to always be in a constant stream of consciousness where you don't feel like the wool is pulled over your eyes so much. You question your belief that everything should just be presented to you on this beautiful plate. Everything is not as it seems.

Things are constantly evolving, and anything could happen. And that's exciting to me.

Perceptions really do define what our realities are. What we're hoping to do with 'Atlanta' is to really shatter that. To shatter it completely wide open. To go from the furthest lane of absurdity to the furthest lane of reality and make them blend.