My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Every artist was first an amateur.

All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don’t know except it looked good.

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.

My mama never wore a pair of pants when I was growing up, and now that’s all she wears. It was so funny for me when I first started seeing Mama wear pants. It was like it wasn’t Mama. Now I’ve bought her many a pantsuit because she just lives in them.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.

My mother insisted that her children read.

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

In this great country, we celebrate success. We don’t want to penalize those who have done well.

I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life.

I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, ‚What should I do?‘ And I say: ‚Act. Do something.‘ Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.

The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.

My mother always wanted to give back.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

I think I’ve committed the one really bad English crime, which is I’ve risen above my station. I was supposed to be a pop star, and suddenly I’m claiming that I’m an artist of some kind.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

You gotta water your plants. Nobody can water them for you.

We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

I believe many people feel like God is mad at them. One day I put a post on Facebook that said, ‚God is not mad at you.‘ Within a few hours, we literally had thousands of positive responses from people saying things like, ‚That is exactly what I needed to hear today.‘ Obviously, this is a message we need to hear.

Mostly, my flying has been solo, but the preparation for it wasn’t. Without my husband’s help and encouragement, I could not have attempted what I have. Ours has been a contented and reasonable partnership, he with his solo jobs and I with mine. But always with work and play together, conducted under a satisfactory system of dual control.

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

Your teammates give you the confidence. They give me the confidence all year, all postseason.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

I got a lot of support from my parents. That’s the one thing I always appreciated. They didn’t tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

I feel impressed to counsel those engaged in personal challenges to do right. In particular, my heart reaches out to those who feel discouraged by the magnitude of their struggle.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.