My affection for Taiwan… is witnessed by everyone. My wife is Taiwanese and I am a son-in-law of Taiwan. I am half Taiwanese.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

I never have really become accustomed to the ‚John.‘ Nobody ever really calls me John… I’ve always been Duke or Marion or John Wayne. It’s a name that goes well together, and it’s like one word – John Wayne.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side, not the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you.

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

Everyone calls me Bruno; they don’t ever call me Peter – that was just my government name.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

You know, when you don’t go on TV and talk about how many women you sleep with, some people in Hollywood, that are supposedly ‚in the know,‘ start whispering that you’re gay. If I were gay, I wouldn’t be ashamed to admit it, but I’m not.

We’re so trendy we can’t even escape ourselves.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

Only Americans can hurt America.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

We can have no ’50-50′ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

To kids, I’ve always been more than just some big tough black guy. I train to be tough – I box and do karate – but underneath all that toughness is a tender man.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, ‚black feminist‘ does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it’s just… womanish.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

I am what I am. A fighter.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am ‚known for‘ is what I am.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

Because I’m small, I’ve been called things from ‚Happy Feet‘ to ‚Little Face.‘

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

I read so much stuff that black women say, especially about my relationship. ‚Oh, he left his black wife to go be with some exotic chick.‘ First of all, my girl is black: she’s Jamaican.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

Proud 2 Pay – that’s something that distinguishes me, that’s something that defines me, and we’re going to keep that going.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.