In the earlier years when I started this project at Stanford University, everyone told me it was nuts to go and try to reproduce the mysterious complexities that occur in a whole cell.
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.
Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years it's a name that the streets taught me a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name and it's time to expand and move on.
Obviously, I'm at the beginning of my career, contrary to what anyone else thinks. I'm 19 years old. In any other country, everywhere else, you're a prospect. And that's what I am right now in Europe. I'm a prospect. I'm not a seasoned veteran.
Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, that's 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me.
When you've played this game for ten years and gone to bat seven-thousand times and gotten two-thousand hits do you know what that really means? It means you've gone zero for five-thousand.
I made the contract with God years ago, that no matter what came through, I would say it, but if I ever hurt someone, I would stop.
For the past several years, the Meth Caucus has worked to engage the Office of National Drug Control Policy on this issue. We have tried to get their attention that meth requires a strong, comprehensive Federal policy.
It took me about eight years to put together the program that I have been living for twenty years.
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!
If I had not passed through trial - through passion, one could say - through these years so painful and so rich, I don't believe I could take on my life and my career as I do today.
I made, over the years in Cambridge, several very good American friends, and America appeared to me, a land of promise in every sense of that word, a land of freedom from the inhibitions and restrictions that I felt in England.
I have a terrible lifestyle. And I don't really see it changing. Maybe in 10 years I'll see it differently - I'll want to see my great-grandchildren and live forever. But right now, young Brittany is not setting things up for old Brittany. And young Brittany does not care.
I always imagined that magically, at some point, I would settle into this very easy and refined sophistication, but it turns out that who you are at eleven is pretty much who you are at 27, so I don't know how much I've learned over the years.
There's a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, 'I remember when 'all right' was two words.'
Well, acting is cheap; I knew all these actors who weren't in the Screen Actors Guild yet, and it happened that they were all just about thirty years old.
I'm a big fan of Coach Dorrell. I watched UCLA football for many, many years. I've grown accustomed to the Pac-10 style.
It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn't.
I used to eat a whole chicken, every day, for lunch. I did that for four years. But it got tiring - go to the store, buy it, eat it. It's a mess.
I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself.
Over the years, a number of other intriguing experimental ideas and areas of investigation have been the objects of my attention, and I have devoted some time and effort to exploring the inherent possbilities.
Of course, I will continue to share my favorite Southern recipes, just like my mama, grandmother and family shared with me over the years. And now, I'll be adding a little bit of a lighter touch to some of these wonderful dishes.
The Olympics are only once every four years, so you have to take advantage of all your opportunities, both to be an inspiration to people and help support your sponsors who help you.
Avon invented the concept of direct marketing and direct selling beauty. And that's still very valid to us. We'll have a firm that will be around for another 114 years as strongly as it was the first 114.
I'm realizing that for so much of my life I had an older viewpoint; I saw things as an older person. That's common among change-of-life babies. So I have this dichotomy where I'm either, like, super young or feel like I'm coming to the end of my years.
The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians, just slaughtering them, for years. Robbing them and slaughtering them.
He had Parkinson's disease for about, I'd say diagnosed for about 11 of the last years of his life. And treatment was not as good as it is now, of course. We're still going along and he died in '85 and he was 77.
Life's a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest.
I don't want to make any mistakes. My parents have been married for 40 years. I want to stay married.
It's hard for me to think about this, but I first went to Southeast Asia as a Marine more than 40 years ago, as a young Marine. I was on Okinawa and then in Vietnam. I've returned in many different hats, which I think has helped me to form my own views about policy out there. I've spent a good bit of time in this region as a journalist.
I'm one who demands a lot from people. I'm not afraid to look at alternative ways in city government. That's what I've done in my two years and will continue to do in the next four.
The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.
About 25 years ago, I was in an apartment, and next door, they put on the radio, so I struck the wall with my fist, but they did not put the radio down. I took a tool and banged until I made a hole through the wall. It was like a comedy movie.
Over the years, I have perfected the art of dancing and photographing at the same time: it's a great double act. If you're dancing, you are joining in. If you stand there rigid, you are not in the flow of things.
Look, even bad years are pretty good years I think.
