Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

Never take anything for granted.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

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

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

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

Sometimes negative news does come out, but it is often exaggerated and manipulated to spread scandal. Journalists sometimes risk becoming ill from coprophilia and thus fomenting coprophagia: which is a sin that taints all men and women, that is, the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive aspects.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

I’m not a bad person.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

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

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.

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

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Travel teaches toleration.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

I think every chef, not just in America, but across the world, has a double-edged sword – two jackets, one that’s driven, a self-confessed perfectionist, thoroughbred, hate incompetence and switch off the stove, take off the jacket and become a family man.

When I look at acting careers that I really admire, I see that it’s been a precise decision-making process for these people. They make decisions based on what they love, and they do only the things that they are passionate about. They play only characters that they can’t stop thinking about.

My life is my message.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be.

I can express myself.

I just dress like… I’m an old black man. Sorry! Like I’m an old Jewish black man. I just dress like it’s still the ’50s.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.