What I like about Elvis is the same thing I like about James Brown, Michael Jackson, Prince. These guys, back in the day, there was no smoke and mirrors. It was just raw talent. They would step out onstage and command an audience. Talk about awesome.

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

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

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.

My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I’m much more expressive off stage.

I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it’s mad that people like me are listened to – you know, rap stars and movie stars.

We were on for six years. We were in syndication for a while. It had its run. I still see the people from ‚Mr. Belvedere,‘ too. We stay in touch.

I’m just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.

In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo.

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.

What’s so beautiful about Miami is that we support each other. We’re just one big family, not just the entertainers, just everyone in general.

There are no record companies in Waikiki.

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

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 came to Hollywood and within a decade I was one of the biggest action stars of all time.

It’s no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.

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 wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I don’t think the money people in Hollywood have ever thought I was normal, but I am dedicated to my work and that’s what counts.

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

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.

That little Miley Cyrus… she’s like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she’s Hannah Montana, but what people don’t realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she’s 40 years old!

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

I want to produce the music to a movie that I’m working on, like what Prince did with ‚Purple Rain.‘

In those days, the early 1980s, TV and film were interchangeable.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

I want to be an executive producer.

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.

My inspiration is R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Prince – for the vocals, anyway.

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.

Film is a very tight little box. If you don’t fit in that box, you’re gone. Television, there’s more room to move around.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

I like Peter Tosh, Bob Marley of course. All of Capleton, Sizzla, Frisco Kid, Buju Banton.

I’m not a chick-flick enthusiast.

A film is sort of binary – it either works or it doesn’t work. It has nothing to do with how good a job you do. If you bring it up to an adequate level where the audience goes with the movie, then it works, that is all.

There was a time Michael Jackson couldn’t get his video on MTV because he was considered to be ‚urban.‘ The Michael Jackson. So I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break down the doors for everyone who will come after I’m gone, after I’m dead.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

Only the public can make a star. It’s the studios who try to make a system out of it.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

Elvis was the only man from Northeast Mississippi who could shake his hips and still be loved by rednecks, cops, and hippies.

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.

I did the Ed Sullivan show four times. I did the Steve Allen show. I did the Jackie Gleason show.

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.

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

I stopped watching TV because of ‚The Wire.‘ Like, ‚The Wire‘ ruined everything for me because I don’t even want to watch anything else now.

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?

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It’s really only to be heard when everyone’s out enjoying it.

Too much TV hurts movies.

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

I’m just changing the game because I know what the fans want and the people want ‚cause I’m a fan of hip-hop.

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

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.

I have a lot of friends who do what I do. Either they’re actresses or singers or things like that.

At the major studios, you see people wanting to remake a TV series, wanting to make a sequel.

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon.