I’ve taken so many kids out of Pittsburgh and onto the great white way in New York City right into a Broadway show.

I can’t act!

Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it’s dangerous.

I want to show audiences I can act.

Actor’s life is very long.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

I think New York has evolved in my work just the way the city has.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

In those days, the early 1980s, TV and film were interchangeable.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

I’d love to do a musical. I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

It’d be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren’t kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I’m not a baby sitter.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.

I came to Hollywood and within a decade I was one of the biggest action stars of all time.

Film is a very tight little box. If you don’t fit in that box, you’re gone. Television, there’s more room to move around.

I got a job when I was 15 because my allowance was about $20 a week which in New York was impossible. So I used to waitress across the street from where I grew up.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

There are a lot of conservative people, a lot of moderate people, Republicans, Democrats, in Hollywood. It is just that the conservative people by the nature of the word itself play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it.

I’m just changing the game because I know what the fans want and the people want ‚cause I’m a fan of hip-hop.

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, auditioning for Broadway was my dream.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

Aside from singing, I’m also a dancer. I’ve been dancing since I was 8.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

I just want to be a great example to younger kids.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It’s really only to be heard when everyone’s out enjoying it.

I get nervous when I don’t get nervous. If I’m nervous I know I’m going to have a good show.

I played Othello, but I didn’t sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn’t do me any good.

Over the years, all my coaches and my teammates have contributed a lot to shape my career. I can never forget their contribution and help.

Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.

In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.

I’m a singer, a writer and an actress – when I find something that I feel good enough about doing.

I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.

I laugh all the time – at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don’t laugh onstage because then it’s serious business.

I’m already the face of the UFC, plus the face of boxing, WWE, and Hollywood.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

Too much TV hurts movies.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Talking to a player helps, but in our sport the majority of learning happens from watching another player. You pick up things like being punctual, being nice to everyone, making sure you give your 100 per cent even in training.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

I think, first of all, I don’t think people understand Ice Cube’s body of work. Ice Cube is a, and I hate to use the word ‚urban‘ but – when you think of Judd Apatow, and a person who’s launched so many careers, Ice Cube has done that for so many comedians, you know?

This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.

I came to California and got signed at a young age. And it’s not like you see in the movies, where you start rubbing shoulders with Timbaland and Pharrell, and you become a giant pop star.

You just wait. I’m going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.