With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

I don’t think I could think of a single thing that’s more isolating than being famous.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

My mother always used to say, ‚Well, if you had been born a little girl growing up in Egypt, you would go to church or go to worship Allah, but surely if those people are worshipping a God, it must be the same God‘ – that’s what she always said. The same God with different names.

At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn’t collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

Smooth functioning of social life has always depended on the recognition of certain basic limits to behavior. We cannot simply say or do anything we wish, or offend people, without paying consequences – isolation, ostracism, etc.

Homophobia is real in this country.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Laughter heals all wounds, and that’s one thing that everybody shares. No matter what you’re going through, it makes you forget about your problems. I think the world should keep laughing.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

I hate being called an ‚icon.‘ I just don’t like it. That’s all there is to it.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don’t belong anymore to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

I don’t like being alone.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.

When I was little… I didn’t relate to princesses. I saw Maleficent, and I just thought she was so – she was so elegant.

I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

Jesus isn’t lettin‘ you off the hook. The Scriptures don’t let you off the hook so easily… When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher‘, ‚Prophet‘, ‚Really nice guy‘ … this is not how Jesus thought of Himself.

Meditation is a great way to keep my body well-centered while juggling shooting schedules and recording sessions.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

I suffer from deep depression, so my only release is music.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.