You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It’s not a job, it’s a passion. When you become good at it, it’s a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

When I’m getting to know someone, I look for someone who has passions that I respect, like his career. Someone who loves what he does is really attractive.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

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

Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.

I dropped out of high school and I couldn’t go to college ‚cause I wasn’t smart enough, so I’d resigned myself to loading trucks and playing punk rock on the weekends.

Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert’s Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.

I did work in a strip club, but I didn’t strip. I danced, and I became very popular.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

You never get over losses. I’ve never gotten over one loss I’ve had in my career. They always stick with me.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

If you like good ol‘ fashion Southern soul food then, yes, I am a good cook! My specialty is chicken dumplings and poke salad.

In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.

I’ve worked in a factory. I was a garbage man. I worked in a post office. It’s not that long ago. I like to think that I’m just a regular guy.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

‚Via Dolorosa‘ is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and I’ll never act again.

I’ve found that men I’ve dated who are in the same business can be really competitive. I’ve found a great group of girlfriends in the same business who aren’t competitive, but a few times guys have started comparing careers and it has been… challenging.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

When you’re a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don’t actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I’ll do, and especially when I’m in New York, I’ll go for a run. And I’ll run 10 or 15k on my – and I run to gain my appetite.

Every chef I know, their cholesterol is through the roof. And mine’s not so great.

My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread – works all the time. I think I’ve been eating pasta for 26 years.

My dinners at home are startlingly simple. Every night, I stop at the market near my hotel and pick up a steak, lamb chops or some liver, which I broil in the electric oven in my room. I usually eat four or five raw carrots with my meat, and that is all. I must be part rabbit; I never get bored with raw carrots.

I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

I just don’t believe in the basic concept that someone should make their whole career in public service.

I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

It’s a small percentage of people who do the 80-hour-a-week high-powered career thing, and they’re almost all men. Why? Well, men are driven by socio-economic status more than women.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

I’ve been a mogul and executive since the beginning of my career. People are just born with that skill.

There’s something boring about people who have to go to an office for a living.

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

I’m a workin‘ girl.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a teacher, an astronaut, or a reggaeton singer, you need to study.

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

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

Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

I left school to concentrate on racing. It was a family decision between my mum, dad and myself.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

That’s when it becomes a business. When you’ve been public a long time, when it’s a career. You do certain films, you sell them.

Jobs are a centuries-old concept created during the Industrial Revolution. Despite the reality that we’re now deep in the Information Age, many people are studying for, or working at, or clinging to the Industrial Age idea of a safe, secure job.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.