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

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

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

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.

You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it’s kind of a lifestyle and it’s easy to get caught up in it – you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone’s doing a certain thing… It’s tough.

I like touring extensively because I think the more hours you spend onstage, the more you know who you are onstage.

My whole life is a theater piece.

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 run New York City!

If I close my eyes and think of Hollywood, all I see is one big varicose vein.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

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

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

I’m not a chick-flick enthusiast.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

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.

When I checked into SEAL Team One many years ago, one of the things that I noticed was there was this old guy, who was younger than I am today, who I decided that I was going to be like. I wanted to emulate what he was doing, and one of those things was he got to work before anybody else.

Acting is happy agony.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

But as far as dream roles – I know this is so expected of me, but I would to play Elphaba in ‚Wicked‘ on Broadway. I have a lot of dream roles, but that’s like my main one because of the vocal track. I love belting high things!

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

I wanna thank MTV and the VMAs for choosing me to be a part of the show because, on this show, if you not an icon or upcomin‘ icon, you’re not on the show, you know?

A lot of times I find that people who are blessed with the most talent don’t ever develop that attitude, and the ones who aren’t blessed in that way are the most competitive and have the biggest heart.

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

I’m not in the loop; I don’t know any actors, really, just the ones I work with.

Too much TV hurts movies.

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.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

I went to see ‚Phantom of the Opera‘ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

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.

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.

I personally don’t like to go see romantic comedies. But people do want to see them, and they seem to want to see me in them.

I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‚Hi,‘ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.

You’ve gotta understand that with branding and the way things are promoted, in our day and age, your older movie stars are not reachable or accessible because they’re not a part of the whole social media world.

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

Doing Saturday Night Live definitely affects my relationship with my girlfriend and with my family, because you feel so much pressure to do well that night. But I think everyone’s grown to accept that and so they give me my space at the show.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

I now have two different audiences. There’s the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

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.

If I want to be called ‚The Rock,‘ I’ll be called ‚The Rock.‘ If I want to go back to wrestling, I’ll go back to wrestling.

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.

Maybe I’ll give Broadway a try. But you know what would be great? Hosting the Oscars. I promise you, that would be a show no one forgot.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!

I love all of the arts. I love motion pictures. I love stage. I love theater.

I’d like to think I’m a great teacher.

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?

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.

I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions – the curtain was up.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

At the end of the day, I want to be part of the same conversation as Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

When I was on TV in the ’80s, I wasn’t thinking, ‚There’s a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he’s gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.‘ I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they’re influenced by me – it’s bizarre.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

One of the reasons I connect to the Super Bowl is that I approach my shows like an athlete.