When I'm at home or at school, I'm casual and comfortable. I tend to wear work out clothes and lots of sweaters.
My first rap name was Ralo. Because my first name is Carlos. I likened myself to what Busta Rhymes was doing when he first came out. And what Onyx did when they first came out - they reminded me of me.
Due to financial reasons, I dropped out of school after eight years of formal schooling.
There's no single movement out there. It's not like in the '60s, when Revolver came out and that's just it for the next year.
I never dreamed that I would hear 10,000 people screaming when I stepped out onto a stage. Well, that's not entirely true. I dreamed about it but in a performing-on-the-stage-at-Staples-Center-or-Madison-Square-Garden context. But never in a I'm-in-a-movie-that-hasn't-even-come-out-yet one.
What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.
If you're trying to write something that you don't understand and embrace at the very core of you, it's not going to turn out with quite the authenticity and passion it should have.
I guess coming out against actual evil takes guts.
Whenever people reach out the hand of friendship towards me, I am not going to refuse that hand.
If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.
My eyes, my brain seek out escape routes wherever I am sent.
I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.
It seems to be that when these communist regimes take over - if you look at the example of Vietnam or Cambodia or Nicaragua - that even in conditions of peace they don't seem to be able to figure out how to support their people, and the human suffering is enormous.
I stole a piece of the chess set on the first film. I took a piece of the treasure out of Bellatrix's vault on this film. And I've taken my wand and I've got my cloak.
You still have to pitch the same game, execute your pitches as best you can. If the shadows end up helping you out, then great, but you can't really worry about that stuff.
Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.
The soldiers' last meal is generally served out about five o'clock in the afternoon, sometimes earlier; and a stretch of fourteen hours intervenes between then and breakfast.
Maybe you're better to play a villain just straight out.
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
Are we a Christian nation now? It's doubtful. But did we start out as one? Without question.
I don't doubt that God can bring good out of tragedies, but the Bible is clear that God is not the author of evil!
I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.
Digital makes things feel more real, like you could reach out and touch them.
It's good just to laugh sometimes, and if it comes out of some truth, it's even stronger.
There are still traces of discrimination against race and gender, but it's a lot different than when I started out. It just comes quietly, slowly, sometimes so quietly that you don't realize it until you start looking back.
It's not that bad things never happen. But there's a pattern in which most people are calm, resourceful, altruistic, and they improvise emergency systems that work really well - whether it's getting the babies out of a collapsed hospital or putting together a community kitchen to feed everybody for the next few months.
When you are on the field, you know exactly what is happening out there. You are in charge. You have to make the right choices. No one can decide for you.
Unfortunately, if you've ever been in southern Georgia on the beaches in a lightning storm, if you're out there, you're in great, great danger, and you can be killed very, very quickly.
I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'
Somebody said to me this morning, 'To what do you attribute your longevity?' I don't know. I mean, I couldn't have planned my life out better. By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I've lived the last 30 years!
Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation.
Sooner or later, we sell out for money.
The songs I've written that are the strongest, I'm like: 'I don't know where that came from. It just kind of popped out.' You feel you can't take a whole lot of credit for it. I didn't purposefully will it into existence.
Owners, the way they blackballed me from baseball, the way they used me, in a sense, and then the way they wanted to send a signal to the other players, saying, you know, we're going to get Jose Canseco out of the game. This is a cue or a message for you other guys to stop using steroids because the owners lost total control of the steroid use.
I think the big lesson I've learned is that it's very hard to write satire in America because almost immediately, whatever you've thought of turns out to come true, or sometimes it already was true.
My fashion sense is relatable but stands out because it's my own.
