I imagine I will be less involved in film and be focused more on family and foreign affairs.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

My kids are the funniest two human beings there are.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Playing in MLS was a great experience. It has boosted my confidence and I feel I have matured as a player.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn’t afford to pay attention.

My father used to wear the same pants for like a week.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father’s head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

It’s hard knowing who to trust with your personal life. When you cry in your room at night, you don’t always know who to call. So I am very close to my family.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.